SEA  WARFARE 

HUDYAR.D  KIPLING 


SEA  WARFARE 


OF  CALIF.  LIBEABY,  LOS  AMGELES 


Books  by  Rudyard  Kipling 


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SEA  WARFARE 


BY 

RUDYARD  KIPLING 


GARDEN  CITY,  NEW  YORK 

DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  COMPANY 

1017 


COPYRIGHT,  1917,  BY 
RUDYARD  KIPLING 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

THE  FRINGES  OP  THE  FLEET 1 

TALES  OF  "THE  TRADE" 93 

DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    .  •  .     .          .          145 


2130680 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET 

(1915) 


IN  Lowestoft  a  boat  was  laid, 

Mark  well  what  I  do  say  I 
And  she  was  built  for  the  herring  trade, 

But  she  has  gone  a-rovin',  a-rovin',  a-rovin', 

The  Lord  knows  where  I 

They  gave  her  Government  coal  to  burn, 
And  a  Q.  F.  gun  at  bow  and  stern, 
And  sent  her  out  a-rovin',  etc. 

Her  skipper  was  mate  of  a  bucko  ship 
Which  always  killed  one  man  per  trip, 
So  he  is  used  to  rovin',  etc. 

Her  mate  was  skipper  of  a  chapel  in  Wales, 
And  so  he  fights  in  topper  and  tails — 
Religi-ous  tho'  ravin*,  etc. 

Her  engineer  is  fifty-eight, 

So  he's  prepared  to  meet  his  fate, 

Which  ain't  unlikely  rovin',  etc. 

3 


4  SEA  WARFARE 

Her  leading-stoker's  seventeen, 

So  he  don't  know  what  the  Judgments  mean, 

Unless  he  cops  'em  rovin',  etc. 

Her  cook  was  chef  in  the  Lost  Dogs'  Home, 

Mark  well  what  I  do  say  ! 
And  I'm  sorry  for  Fritz  when  they  all  come 

A-rovin',  a-rovin' ,  a-roarin'  and  a-rovin', 

Round  the  North  Sea  rovin', 

The  Lord  knows  where  ! 


THE  AUXILIARIES 


THE  Navy  is  very  old  and  very  wise.  Much 
of  her  wisdom  is  on  record  and  available 
for  reference;  but  more  of  it  works  in  the 
unconscious  blood  of  those  who  serve  her. 
She  has  a  thousand  years  of  experience,  and 
can  find  precedent  or  parallel  for  any  situa- 
tion that  the  force  of  the  weather  or  the 
malice  of  the  filing's  enemies  may  bring 
about. 

The  main  principles  of  sea  warfare  hold 
good  throughout  all  ages,  and,  so  far  as  the 
Navy  has  been  allowed  to  put  out  her  strength, 
these  principles  have  been  applied  over  all 
the  seas  of  the  world.  For  matters  of 
detail  the  Navy,  to  whom  all  days  are  alike, 
has  simply  returned  to  the  practice  and 
resurrected  the  spirit  of  old  days. 


6  SEA  WARFARE 

In  the  late  French  wars,  a  merchant 
sailing  out  of  a  Channel  port  might  hi  a 
few  hours  find  himself  laid  by  the  heels 
and  under  way  for  a  French  prison.  His 
Majesty's  ships  of  the  Line,  and  even  the 
big  frigates,  took  little  part  in  policing  the 
waters  for  him,  unless  he  were  in  convoy. 
The  sloops,  cutters,  gun-brigs,  and  local 
craft  of  all  kinds  were  supposed  to  look  after 
that,  while  the  Line  was  busy  elsewhere. 
So  the  merchants  passed  resolutions  against 
the  inadequate  protection  afforded  to  the 
trade,  and  the  narrow  seas  were  full  of 
single-ship  actions;  mail -packets,  West 
Country  brigs,  and  fat  East  Indiamen  fight- 
ing, for  their  own  hulls  and  cargo,  anything 
that  the  watchful  French  ports  sent  against 
them;  the  sloops  and  cutters  bearing  a  hand 
if  they  happened  to  be  within  reach. 

THE  OLDEST  NAVY 

It  was  a  brutal  age,  ministered  to  by 
hard-fisted  men,  and  we  had  put  it  a  hundred 
decent  years  behind  us  when — it  all  comes 
back  again!  To-day  there  are  no  prisons 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET    7 

for  the  crews  of  merchantmen,  but  they  can 
go  to  the  bottom  by  mine  and  torpedo  even 
more  quickly  than  their  ancestors  were  run 
into  Le  Havre.  The  submarine  takes  the 
place  of  the  privateer;  the  Line,  as  in  the 
old  wars,  is  occupied,  bombarding  and 
blockading,  elsewhere,  but  the  sea-borne 
traffic  must  continue,  and  that  is  being 
looked  after  by  the  lineal  descendants  of  the 
crews  of  the  long  extinct  cutters  and  sloops 
and  gun-brigs.  The  hour  struck,  and  they 
reappeared,  to  the  tune  of  fifty  thousand 
odd  men  in  more  than  two  thousand  ships, 
of  which  I  have  seen  a  few  hundred. 
Words  of  command  may  have  changed  a 
little,  the  tools  are  certainly  more  complex, 
but  the  spirit  of  the  new  crews  who  come 
to  the  old  job  is  utterly  unchanged.  It  is 
the  same  fierce,  hard -living,  heavy-handed, 
very  cunning  service  out  of  which  the  Navy 
as  we  know  it  to-day  was  born.  It  is  called 
indifferently  the  Trawler  and  Auxiliary 
Fleet.  It  is  chiefly  composed  of  fishermen, 
but  it  takes  in  every  one  who  may  have 
maritime  tastes — from  retired  admirals  to 


8  SEA  WARFARE 

the  sons  of  the  sea-cook.  It  exists  for  the 
benefit  of  the  traffic  and  the  annoyance  of 
the  enemy.  Its  doings  are  recorded  by 
flags  stuck  into  charts;  its  casualties  are 
buried  in  obscure  corners  of  the  newspapers. 
The  Grand  Fleet  knows  it  slightly;  the 
restless  light  cruisers  who  chaperon  it  from 
the  background  are  more  intimate;  the 
destroyers  working  off  unlighted  coasts  over 
unmarked  shoals  come,  as  you  might  say,  in 
direct  contact  with  it;  the  submarine  alter- 
nately praises  and — since  one  periscope  is 
very  like  another — curses  its  activities;  but 
the  steady  procession  of  traffic  in  home 
waters,  liner  and  tramp,  six  every  sixty 
minutes,  blesses  it  altogether. 

Since  this  most  Christian  war  includes 
laying  mines  in  the  fairways  of  traffic,  and 
since  these  mines  may  be  laid  at  any  time 
by  German  submarines  especially  built  for 
the  work,  or  by  neutral  ships,  all  fairways 
must  be  swept  continuously  day  and  night. 
When  a  nest  of  mines  is  reported,  traffic 
must  be  hung  up  or  deviated  till  it  is  cleared 
out.  When  traffic  comes  up  Channel  it 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET  9 

must  be  examined  for  contraband  and  other 
things;  and  the  examining  tugs  lie  out  in 
a  blaze  of  lights  to  remind  ships  of  this. 
Months  ago,  when  the  war  was  young,  the 
tugs  did  not  know  what  to  look  for 
specially.  Now  they  do.  All  this  mine- 
searching  and  reporting  and  sweeping,  plus 
the  direction  and  examination  of  the  traffic, 
plus  the  laying  of  our  own  ever-shifting 
mine-fields,  is  part  of  the  Trawler  Fleet's 
work,  because  the  Navy-as-we-knew-it  is 
busy  elsewhere.  And  there  is  always  the 
enemy  submarine  with  a  price  on  her  head, 
whom  the  Trawler  Fleet  hunts  and  traps 
with  zeal  and  joy.  Add  to  this,  that  there 
are  boats,  fishing  for  real  fish,  to  be  protected 
in  their  work  at  sea  or  chased  off  dangerous 
areas  whither,  because  they  are  strictly  for- 
bidden to  go,  they  naturally  repair,  and  you 
will  begin  to  get  some  idea  of  what  the 
Trawler  and  Auxiliary  Fleet  does. 

THE  SHIPS  AND  THE  MEN 

Now,    imagine    the    acreage    of    several 
dock-basins  crammed,  gunwale  to  gunwale, 


10  SEA  WARFARE 

with  brown  and  umber  and  ochre  and  rust- 
red  steam-trawlers,  tugs,  harbour-boats,  and 
yachts  once  clean  and  respectable,  now 
dirty  and  happy.  Throw  in  fish-steamers, 
surprise-packets  of  unknown  lines  and  in- 
describable junks,  sampans,  lorchas,  cata- 
marans, and  General  Service  stink-pontoons 
filled  with  indescribable  apparatus,  manned 
by  men  no  dozen  of  whom  seem  to  talk  the 
same  dialect  or  wear  the  same  clothes.  The 
mustard-coloured  jersey  who  is  cleaning  a 
six-pounder  on  a  Hull  boat  clips  his  words 
between  his  teeth  and  would  be  happier  in 
Gaelic.  The  whitish  singlet  and  grey 
trousers  held  up  by  what  is  obviously  his 
soldier  brother's  spare  regimental  belt  is 
pure  Lowestoft.  The  complete  blue-serge- 
and-soot  suit  passing  a  wire  down  a  hatch  is 
Glasgow  as  far  as  you  can  hear  him,  which 
is  a  fair  distance,  because  he  wants  something 
done  to  the  other  end  of  the  wire,  and  the 
flat-faced  boy  who  should  be  attending  to  it 
hails  from  the  remoter  Hebrides,  and  is 
looking  at  a  girl  on  the  dock-edge.  The 
bow-legged  man  in  the  ulster  and  green- 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE   FLEET  11 

worsted  comforter  is  a  warm  Grimsby 
skipper,  worth  several  thousands.  He  and 
his  crew,  who  are  mostly  his  own  relations, 
keep  themselves  to  themselves,  and  save 
their  money.  The  pirate  with  the  red 
beard,  barking  over  the  rail  at  a  friend  with 
gold  earrings,  comes  from  Skye.  The  friend 
is  West  Country.  The  noticeably  insignifi- 
cant man  with  the  soft  and  deprecating  eye 
is  skipper  and  part-owner  of  the  big  slashing 
Iceland  trawler  on  which  he  droops  like 
a  flower.  She  is  built  to  almost  Western 
Ocean  lines,  carries  a  little  boat-deck  aft 
with  tremendous  stanchions,  has  a  nose 
cocked  high  against  ice  and  sweeping  seas, 
and  resembles  a  hawk-moth  at  rest.  The 
small,  sniffing  man  is  reported  to  be  a  "holy 
terror  at  sea." 

HUNTERS  AND  FISHERS 

The  child  in  the  Pullman-car  uniform 
just  going  ashore  is  a  wireless  operator,  aged 
nineteen.  He  is  attached  to  a  flagship  at 
least  120  feet  long,  under  an  admiral  aged 
twenty-five,  who  was,  till  the  other  day, 


12  SEA  WARFARE 

third  mate  of  a  North  Atlantic  tramp,  but 
who  now  leads  a  squadron  of  six  trawlers  to 
hunt  submarines.  The  principle  is  simple 
enough.  Its  application  depends  on  circum- 
stances and  surroundings.  One  class  of 
German  submarines  meant  for  murder  off 
the  coasts  may  use  a  winding  and  rabbit-like 
track  between  shoals  where  the  choice  of 
water  is  limited.  Their  career  is  rarely 
long,  but,  while  it  lasts,  moderately  exciting. 
Others,  told  off  for  deep-sea  assassinations, 
are  attended  to  quite  quietly  and  without 
any  excitement  at  all.  Others,  again,  work 
the  inside  of  the  North  Sea,  making  no 
distinction  between  neutrals  and  Allied 
ships.  These  carry  guns,  and  since  their 
work  keeps  them  a  good  deal  on  the  surface, 
the  Trawler  Fleet,  as  we  know,  engages 
them  there — the  submarine  firing,  sinking, 
and  rising  again  in  unexpected  quarters; 
the  trawler  firing,  dodging,  and  trying  to 
ram.  The  trawlers  are  strongly  built,  and 
can  stand  a  great  deal  of  punishment.  Yet 
again,  other  German  submarines  hang  about 
the  skirts  of  fishing-fleets  and  fire  into  the 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET  13 

brown  of  them.  When  the  war  was  young 
this  gave  splendidly  "frightful"  results,  but 
for  some  reason  or  other  the  game  is  not  as 
popular  as  it  used  to  be. 

Lastly,  there  are  German  submarines 
who  perish  by  ways  so  curious  and  in- 
explicable that  one  could  almost  credit  the 
whispered  idea  (it  must  come  from  the 
Scotch  skippers)  that  the  ghosts  of  the 
women  they  drowned  pilot  them  to  de- 
struction. But  what  form  these  shadows 
take — whether  of  "The  Lusitania  Ladies," 
or  humbler  stewardesses  and  hospital  nurses 
— and  what  lights  or  sounds  the  thing 
fancies  it  sees  or  hears  before  it  is  blotted 
out,  no  man  will  ever  know.  The  main 
fact  is  that  the  work  is  being  done. 
Whether  it  was  necessary  or  politic  to 
re-awaken  by  violence  every  sporting  in- 
stinct of  a  sea-going  people  is  a  question 
which  the  enemy  may  have  to  consider 
later  on. 


DAWN    off   the    Foreland — the    young  flood 

making 

Jumbled  and  short  and  steep — 
Black  in  the  hollows  and  bright  where  it's 

breaking — 

Awkward  water  to  sweep. 
"Mines  reported  in  the  fairway, 
"  Warn  all  traffic  and  detain. 
"Sent  up  Unity,  Claribel,  Assyrian,  Storm- 
cock,  and  Golden  Gain." 

Noon  off  the  Foreland — the  first  ebb  making 

Lumpy  and  strong  in  the  bight. 
Boom  after  boom,  and  the  golf-hut  shaking 
And  the  jackdaws  wild  with  fright  ! 
"Mines  located  in  the  fairway, 
"Boats  now  working  up  the  chain, 
"  Sweepers — Unity,       Claribel,       Assyrian, 
Stormcock,  and  Golden  Gain.11 
is 


16  SEA  WARFARE 

Dusk  off  the  Foreland — the  last  light  going 

And  the  traffic  crowding  through. 
And  five  damned  trawlers  with  their  syreens 

blowing 

Heading  the  whole  review  I 
"Sweep  completed  in  the  fairway. 
"No  more  mines  remain. 
"  'Sent  back  Unity,  Claribel,  Assyrian,  Storm- 
cock,  and  Golden  Gain." 


THE  AUXILIARIES 

n 

THE  Trawlers  seem  to  look  on  mines  as 
more  or  less  fairplay.  But  with  the  torpedo 
it  is  otherwise.  A  Yarmouth  man  lay  on 
his  hatch,  his  gear  neatly  stowed  away 
below,  and  told  me  that  another  Yarmouth 
boat  had  "gone  up,"  with  all  hands  except 
one.  '"Twas  a  submarine.  Not  a  mine," 
said  he.  "They  never  gave  our  boys  no 
chance.  Na!  She  was  a  Yarmouth  boat 
— we  knew  'em  all.  They  never  gave  the 
boys  no  chance."  He  was  a  submarine 
hunter,  and  he  illustrated  by  means  of 
matches  placed  at  various  angles  how  the 
blindfold  business  is  conducted.  "And 
then,"  he  ended,  "there's  always  what  he'll 
do.  You've  got  to  think  that  out  for 

17 


18  SEA  WARFARE 

yourself — while  you're  working  above  him 
— same  as  if  'twas  fish."  I  should  not  care 
to  be  hunted  for  the  life  in  shallow  waters 
by  a  man  who  knows  every  bank  and  pot- 
hole of  them,  even  if  I  had  not  killed  his 
friends  the  week  before.  Being  nearly  all 
fishermen  they  discuss  their  work  in  terms 
of  fish,  and  put  in  their  leisure  fishing  over- 
side, when  they  sometimes  pull  up  ghastly 
souvenirs.  But  they  all  want  guns.  Those 
who  have  three-pounders  clamour  for  sixes; 
sixes  for  twelves;  and  the  twelve-pound 
aristocracy  dream  of  four-inchers  on  anti- 
aircraft mountings  for  the  benefit  of  roving 
Zeppelins.  They  will  all  get  them  in  time, 
and  I  fancy  it  will  be  long  ere  they  give 
them  up.  One  West  Country  mate  an- 
nounced that  "a  gun  is  a  handy  thing  to 
have  aboard — always."  "But  in  peace- 
time?" I  said.  "Wouldn't  it  be  in  the 
way?" 

"We'm  used  to  'em  now,"  was  the 
smiling  answer.  "Niver  go  to  sea  again 
without  a  gun — 7  wouldn't — if  I  had  my 
way.  It  keeps  all  hands  pleased-like." 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET  19 

They  talk  about  men  in  the  Army  who 
will  never  willingly  go  back  to  civil  life. 
What  of  the  fishermen  who  have  tasted 
something  sharper  than  salt  water — and 
what  of  the  young  third  and  fourth  mates 
who  have  held  independent  commands  for 
nine  months  past?  One  of  them  said  to 
me  quite  irrelevantly:  "I  used  to  be  the 
animal  that  got  up  the  trunks  for  the 
women  on  baggage-days  in  the  old  Bodiam 
Castle,"  and  he  mimicked  their  requests  for 
"the  large  brown  box,"  or  "the  black  dress 
basket,"  as  a  freed  soul  might  scoff  at  his 
old  life  in  the  flesh. 

"A  COMMON  SWEEPER" 

My  sponsor  and  chaperon  in  this  Eliza- 
bethan world  of  eighteenth-century  seamen 
was  an  A.B.  who  had  gone  down  in  the 
Landrail,  assisted  at  the  Heligoland  fight, 
seen  the  Blucher  sink  and  the  bombs 
dropped  on  our  boats  when  we  tried  to 
save  the  drowning  ("Whereby,"  as  he 
said,  "those  Germans  died  gottstrafin' 


20  SEA  WARFARE 

their  own  country  because  we  didn't  wait 
to  be  strafed"),  and  has  now  found  more 
peaceful  days  in  an  Office  ashore.  He  led 
me  across  many  decks  from  craft  to  craft 
to  study  the  various  appliances  that  they 
specialise  in.  Almost  our  last  was  what 
a  North  Country  trawler  called  a  "  common 
sweeper,"  that  is  to  say,  a  mine-sweeper. 
She  was  at  tea  in  her  shirt-sleeves,  and 
she  protested  loudly  that  there  was  "noth- 
ing hi  sweeping."  "See  that  wire  rope?" 
she  said.  "Well,  it  leads  through  that 
lead  to  the  ship  which  you're  sweepin'  with. 
She  makes  her  end  fast  and  you  make 
yourn.  Then  you  sweep  together  at  which- 
ever depth  you've  agreed  upon  between 
you,  by  means  of  that  arrangement  there 
which  regulates  the  depth.  They  give  you 
a  glass  sort  o'  thing  for  keepin'  your  distance 
from  the  other  ship,  but  that's  not  wanted 
if  you  know  each  other.  Well,  then,  you 
sweep,  as  the  sayin'  is.  There's  nothin'  in 
it.  You  sweep  till  this  wire  rope  fouls  the 
bloomin'  mines.  Then  you  go  on  till  they 
appear  on  the  surface,  so  to  say,  and  then 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET    21 

you  explodes  them  by  means  of  shootin'  at 
'em  with  that  rifle  in  the  galley  there. 
There's  nothin'  in  sweepin'  more  than 
that." 

"And  if  you  hit  a  mine?"  I  asked. 

"You  go  up — but  you  hadn't  ought  to 
hit  'em,  if  you're  careful.  The  thing  is  to 
get  hold  of  the  first  mine  all  right,  and  then 
you  go  on  to  the  next,  and  so  on,  in  a  way 
o'  speakin'." 

"And  you  can  fish,  too,  'tween  times," 
said  a  voice  from  the  next  boat.  A  man 
leaned  over  and  returned  a  borrowed  mug. 
They  talked  about  fishing — notably  that 
once  they  caught  some  red  mullet,  which 
the  "common  sweeper"  and  his  neighbour 
both  agreed  was  "not  natural  in  those 
waters."  As  for  mere  sweeping,  it  bored 
them  profoundly  to  talk  about  it.  I  only 
learned  later  as  part  of  the  natural  history 
of  mines,  that  if  you  rake  the  tri-nitro- 
toluol  by  hand  out  of  a  German  mine  you 
develop  eruptions  and  skin-poisoning.  But 
on  the  authority  of  two  experts,  there  is 
nothing  in  sweeping.  Nothing  whatever! 


22  SEA  WARFARE 

A  BLOCK  IN  THE  TRAFFIC 

Now  imagine,  not  a  pistol-shot  from 
these  crowded  quays,  a  little  Office  hung 
round  with  charts  that  are  pencilled  and 
noted  over  various  shoals  and  soundings. 
There  is  a  movable  list  of  the  boats  at 
work,  with  quaint  and  domestic  names. 
Outside  the  window  lies  the  packed  harbour 
— outside  that  again  the  line  of  traffic  up 
and  down — a  stately  cinema-show  of  six 
ships  to  the  hour.  For  the  moment  the 
film  sticks.  A  boat — probably  a  "common 
sweeper" — reports  an  obstruction  in  a 
traffic  lane  a  few  miles  away.  She  has 
found  and  exploded  one  mine.  The  Office 
heard  the  dull  boom  of  it  before  the  wire- 
less report  came  in.  In  all  likelihood  there 
is  a  nest  of  them  there.  It  is  possible  that 
a  submarine  may  have  got  in  last  night 
between  certain  shoals  and  laid  them  out. 
The  shoals  are  being  shepherded  in  case 
she  is  hidden  anywhere,  but  the  boundaries 
of  the  newly  discovered  mine-area  must  be 
fixed  and  the  traffic  deviated.  There  is  a 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET  23 

tramp  outside  with  tugs  in  attendance. 
She  has  hit  something  and  is  leaking  badly. 
Where  shall  she  go?  The  Office  gives  her 
her  destination — the  harbour  is  too  full  for 
her  to  settle  down  here.  She  swings  off 
between  the  faithful  tugs.  Down  coast 
some  one  asks  by  wireless  if  they  shall  hold 
up  their  traffic.  It  is  exactly  like  a  signaller 
" offering  "  a  train  to  the  next  block.  :<  Yes," 
the  Office  replies.  "Wait  a  while.  If  it's 
what  we  think,  there  will  be  a  little  delay. 
If  it  isn't  what  we  think,  there  will  be  a 
little  longer  delay."  Meantime,  sweepers 
are  nosing  round  the  suspected  area— 
"looking  for  cuckoos'  eggs,"  as  a  voice 
suggests;  and  a  patrol-boat  lathers  her 
way  down  coast  to  catch  and  stop  anything 
that  may  be  on  the  move,  for  skippers  are 
sometimes  rather  careless.  Words  begin 
to  drop  out  of  the  air  into  the  chart-hung 
Office.  "Six  and  a  half  cables  south, 
fifteen  east"  of  something  or  other.  "Mark 
it  well,  and  tell  them  to  work  up  from 
there,"  is  the  order.  "Another  mine  ex- 
ploded!" "Yes,  and  we  heard  that  too," 


24  SEA  WARFARE 

says  the  Office.  "What  about  the  sub- 
marine?" "Elizabeth  Hug  gins  reports  ..." 
Elizabeth's  scandal  must  be  fairly  high 
flavoured,  for  a  torpedo-boat  of  immoral 
aspect  slings  herself  out  of  harbour  and 
hastens  to  share  it.  If  Elizabeth  has  not 
spoken  the  truth,  there  may  be  words  be- 
tween the  parties.  For  the  present  a 
pencilled  suggestion  seems  to  cover  the 
case,  together  with  a  demand,  as  far  as  one 
can  make  out,  for  "more  common  sweepers." 
They  will  be  forthcoming  very  shortly. 
Those  at  work  have  got  the  run  of  the 
mines  now,  and  are  busily  howking  them 
up.  A  trawler-skipper  wishes  to  speak  to 
the  Office.  "They"  have  ordered  him  out, 
but  his  boiler,  most  of  it,  is  on  the  quay  at 
the  present  time,  and  "ye'll  remember,  it's 
the  same  wi'  my  foremast  an'  port  rigging, 
sir."  The  Office  does  not  precisely  remem- 
ber, but  if  boiler  and  foremast  are  on  the 
quay  the  rest  of  the  ship  had  better  stay 
alongside.  The  skipper  falls  away  relieved. 
(He  scraped  a  tramp  a  few  nights  ago  in  a 
bit  of  a  sea.)  There  is  a  little  mutter  of  gun- 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET  25 

fire  somewhere  across  the  grey  water  where 
a  fleet  is  at  work.  A  monitor  as  broad  as 
she  is  long  comes  back  from  wherever  the 
trouble  is,  slips  through  the  harbour  mouth, 
all  wreathed  with  signals,  is  received  by  two 
motherly  lighters,  and,  to  all  appearance, 
goes  to  sleep  between  them.  The  Office 
does  not  even  look  up;  for  that  is  not  in 
their  department.  They  have  found  a 
trawler  to  replace  the  boilerless  one.  Her 
name  is  slid  into  the  rack.  The  immoral 
torpedo-boat  flounces  back  to  her  moorings. 
Evidently  what  Elizabeth  Huggins  said 
was  not  evidence.  The  messages  and  re- 
plies begin  again  as  the  day  closes. 


THE  NIGHT  PATROL 

Return  now  to  the  inner  harbour.  At 
twilight  there  was  a  stir  among  the  packed 
craft  like  the  separation  of  dried  tea-leaves 
in  water.  The  swing-bridge  across  the 
basin  shut  against  us.  A  boat  shot  out 
of  the  jam,  took  the  narrow  exit  at  a  fair 
seven  knots  and  rounded  in  the  outer 


26  SEA  WARFARE 

harbour  with  all  the  pomp  of  a  flagship, 
which  was  exactly  what  she  was.  Others 
followed,  breaking  away  from  every  quarter 
in  silence.  Boat  after  boat  fell  into  line — - 
gear  stowed  away,  spars  and  buoys  in  order 
on  their  clean  decks,  guns  cast  loose  and 
ready,  wheel-house  windows  darkened,  and 
everything  in  order  for  a  day  or  a  week  or 
a  month  out.  There  was  no  word  anywhere. 
The  interrupted  foot-traffic  stared  at  them 
as  they  slid  past  below.  A  woman  beside 
me  waved  her  hand  to  a  man  on  one  of  them, 
and  I  saw  his  face  light  as  he  waved  back. 
The  boat  where  they  had  demonstrated  for 
me  with  matches  was  the  last.  Her  skipper 
hadn't  thought  it  worth  while  to  tell  me 
that  he  was  going  that  evening.  Then  the 
line  straightened  up  and  stood  out  to  sea. 

:*You  never  said  this  was  going  to 
happen,"  I  said  reproachfully  to  my  A.B. 

"No  more  I  did,"  said  he.  "It's  the 
night-patrol  going  out.  Fact  is,  I'm 
so  used  to  the  bloomin'  evolution  that 
it  never  struck  me  to  mention  it  as  you 
might  say." 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET  27 

Next  morning  I  was  at  service  in  a  man- 
of-war,  and  even  as  we  came  to  the  prayer 
that  the  Navy  might  "be  a  safeguard  to 
such  as  pass  upon  the  sea  on  their  lawful 
occasions,"  I  saw  the  long  procession  of 
traffic  resuming  up  and  down  the  Channel 
— six  ships  to  the  hour.  It  has  been  hung 
up  for  a  bit,  they  said. 


FAREWELL  and  adieu  to  you,  Greenwich  ladies, 

Farewell  and  adieu  to  you,  ladies  ashore ! 

For  we've  received  orders  to  work  to  the  east- 
ward 

Where  we  hope  in  a  short  time  to  strafe  'em 
some  more. 

We'll  duck  and  we'll  dive  like  little  tin  turtles, 

We'll  duck  and  we'll  dive  underneath  the 
North  Seas, 

Until  we  strike  something  that  doesn't  ex- 
pect us, 

From  here  to  Cuxhaven  it's  go  as  you  please  ! 

The  first  thing  we  did  was  to  dock  in  a  mine- 
field, 

Which  isn't  a  place  where  repairs  should  be 
done; 

20 


30  SEA  WARFARE 

And  there  we   lay   doggo   in   twelve-fathom 

water 
With  tri-nitro-toluol  hogging  our  run. 

The  next  thing  we  did,   we  rose  under   a 

Zeppelin, 
With  his  shiny  big  belly  half  blocking  the 

sky. 
But  what  in  the — Heavens  can  you  do  with 

six-pounders  ? 
So  we  fired  what  we  had  and  we  bade  him 

good-bye. 


SUBMARINES 


THE  chief  business  of  the  Trawler  Fleet  is 
to  attend  to  the  traffic.  The  submarine  in 
her  sphere  attends  to  the  enemy.  Like  the 
destroyer,  the  submarine  has  created  its 
own  type  of  officer  and  man — with  language 
and  traditions  apart  from  the  rest  of  the 
Service,  and  yet  at  heart  unchangingly 
of  the  Service.  Their  business  is  to  run 
monstrous  risks  from  earth,  air,  and  water, 
in  what,  to  be  of  any  use,  must  be  the 
coldest  of  cold  blood. 

The  commander's  is  more  a  one-man 
job,  as  the  crew's  is  more  team-work,  than 
any  other  employment  afloat.  That  is  why 
the  relations  between  submarine  officers 
and  men  are  what  they  are.  They  play 

si 


32  SEA  WARFARE 

hourly  for  each  other's  lives  with  Death  the 
Umpire  always  at  their  elbow  on  tiptoe  to 
give  them  "out." 

There  is  a  stretch  of  water,  once  dear 
to  amateur  yachtsmen,  now  given  over 
to  scouts,  submarines,  destroyers,  and,  of 
course,  contingents  of  trawlers.  We  were 
waiting  the  return  of  some  boats  which 
were  due  to  report.  A  couple  surged  up 
the  still  harbour  in  the  afternoon  light  and 
tied  up  beside  their  sisters.  There  climbed 
out  of  them  three  or  four  high-booted, 
sunken-eyed  pirates  clad  in  sweaters,  under 
jackets  that  a  stoker  of  the  last  generation 
would  have  disowned.  This  was  their  first 
chance  to  compare  notes  at  close  hand. 
Together  they  lamented  the  loss  of  a 
Zeppelin — "a  perfect  mug  of  a  Zepp," 
who  had  come  down  very  low  and  offered 
one  of  them  a  sitting  shot.  "But  what 
can  you  do  with  our  guns?  I  gave  him 
what  I  had,  and  then  he  started  bombing." 

"I  know  he  did,"  another  said.  "I  heard 
him.  That's  what  brought  me  down  to 
you.  I  thought  he  had  you  that  last  time." 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET  33 

"No,  I  was  forty  foot  under  when  he 
hove  out  the  big  un.  What  happened  to 
you?" 

"My  steering-gear  jammed  just  after 
I  went  down,  and  I  had  to  go  round  in 
circles  till  I  got  it  straightened  out.  But 
wasn't  he  a  mug!" 

"Was  he  the  brute  with  the  patch  on  his 
port  side?"  a  sister-boat  demanded. 

"  No !  This  fellow  had  just  been  hatched. 
He  was  almost  sitting  on  the  water,  heaving 
bombs  over." 

"And  my  blasted  steering-gear  went  and 
chose  then  to  go  wrong,"  the  other  com- 
mander mourned.  "I  thought  his  last  little 
egg  was  going  to  get  me!" 

Half  an  hour  later,  I  was  formally  intro- 
duced to  three  or  four  quite  strange,  quite 
immaculate  officers,  freshly  shaved,  and  a 
little  tired  about  the  eyes,  whom  I  thought 
I  had  met  before. 

LABOUR  AND  REFRESHMENT 

Meantime  (it  was  on  the  hour  of  evening 
drinks)  one  of  the  boats  was  still  unaccounted 


34  SEA  WARFARE 

for.  No  one  talked  of  her.  They  rather 
discussed  motor-cars  and  Admiralty  con- 
structors, but — it  felt  like  that  queer  twi- 
light watch  at  the  front  when  the  homing 
aeroplanes  drop  in.  Presently  a  signaller 
entered:  "  V  42  outside,  sir;  wants  to  know 
which  channel  she  shall  use."  "Oh,  thank 
you.  Tell  her  to  take  so-and-so."  .  .  . 
Mine,  I  remember,  was  vermouth  and  bit- 
ters, and  later  on  V  42  himself  found  a  soft 
chair  and  joined  the  committee  of  instruc- 
tion. Those  next  for  duty,  as  well  as  those  in 
training,  wished  to  hear  what  was  going  on, 
and  who  had  shifted  what  to  where,  and 
how  certain  arrangements  had  worked.  They 
were  told  in  language  not  to  be  found  in 
any  printable  book.  Questions  and  answers 
were  alike  Hebrew  to  one  listener,  but  he 
gathered  that  every  boat  carried  a  second  in 
command — a  strong,  persevering  youth,  who 
seemed  responsible  for  everything  that  went 
wrong,  from  a  motor  cylinder  to  a  torpedo. 
Then  somebody  touched  on  the  mercantile 
marine  and  its  habits. 

Said  one  philosopher:    "They  can't  be 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET   35 

expected  to  take  any  more  risks  than  they 
do.  /  wouldn't,  if  I  was  a  skipper.  I'd 
loose  off  at  any  blessed  periscope  I  saw." 

"That's  all  very  fine.  You  wait  till 
you've  had  a  patriotic  tramp  trying  to  strafe 
you  at  your  own  back-door,"  said  another. 

Some  one  told  a  tale  of  a  man  with  a 
voice,  notable  even  in  a  Service  where  men 
are  not  trained  to  whisper.  He  was  coming 
back,  empty-handed,  dirty,  tired,  and  best 
left  alone.  From  the  peace  of  the  German 
side  he  had  entered  our  hectic  home-waters, 
where  the  usual  tramp  shelled,  and  by 
miraculous  luck,  crumpled  his  periscope. 
Another  man  might  have  dived,  but  Boaner- 
ges kept  on  rising.  Majestic  and  wrathful 
he  rose  personally  through  his  main  hatch, 
and  at  2000  yards  (have  I  said  it  was  a  still 
day?)  addressed  the  tramp.  Even  at  that 
distance  she  gathered  it  was  a  Naval  officer 
with  a  grievance,  and  by  the  time  he  ran 
alongside  she  was  in  a  state  of  coma,  but 
managed  to  stammer:  "Well,  sir,  at  least 
you'll  admit  that  our  shooting  was  pretty 
good." 


36  SEA  WARFARE 

"And  that,"  said  my  informant,  "put  the 
lid  on!"  Boanerges  went  down  lest  he 
should  be  tempted  to  murder;  and  the  tramp 
affirms  she  heard  him  rumbling  beneath  her, 
like  an  inverted  thunder-storm,  for  fifteen 
minutes. 

"All  those  tramps  ought  to  be  disarmed, 
and  we  ought  to  have  all  their  guns,"  said  a 
voice  out  of  a  corner. 

"What?  Still  worrying  over  your  'mug'?" 
some  one  replied. 

"He  was  a  mug!"  went  on  the  man  of 
one  idea.  "If  I'd  had  a  couple  of  twelves 
even,  I  could  have  strafed  him  proper.  I 
don't  know  whether  I  shall  mutiny,  or  de- 
sert, or  write  to  the  First  Sea  Lord  about  it." 

"Strafe  all  Admiralty  constructors  to 
begin  with.  I  could  build  a  better  boat 
with  a  4-inch  lathe  and  a  sardine-tin  than 

,"  the  speaker  named  her  by  letter  and 

number. 

"That's  pure  jealousy,"  her  commander 
explained  to  the  company.  "Ever  since  I 
installed — ahem ! — my  patent  electric  wash- 
basin he's  been  intriguin'  to  get  her.  Why? 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET  37 

We  know  he  doesn't  wash.    He'd  only  use 
the  basin  to  keep  beer  in." 


UNDERWATER  WORKS 

However  often  one  meets  it,  as  in  this 
war  one  meets  it  at  every  turn,  one  never 
gets  used  to  the  Holy  Spirit  of  Man  at  his 
job.  The  "common  sweeper,"  growling 
over  his  mug  of  tea  that  there  was  "nothing 
in  sweepin',"  and  these  idly  chaffing  men, 
new  shaved  and  attired,  from  the  gates  of 
Death  which  had  let  them  through  for  the 
fiftieth  time,  were  all  of  the  same  fabric — 
incomprehensible,  I  should  imagine,  to  the 
enemy.  And  the  stuff  held  good  through- 
out all  the  world — from  the  Dardanelles  to 
the  Baltic,  where  only  a  little  while  ago 
another  batch  of  submarines  had  slipped  in 
and  begun  to  be  busy.  I  had  spent  some  of 
the  afternoon  in  looking  through  reports  of 
submarine  work  in  the  Sea  of  Marmora. 
They  read  like  the  diary  of  energetic  weasels 
in  an  overcrowded  chicken-run,  and  the 
results  for  each  boat  were  tabulated  some- 


38  SEA  WARFARE 

thing  like  a  cricket  score.  There  were  no 
maiden  overs.  One  came  across  jewels  of 
price  set  in  the  flat  official  phraseology. 
For  example,  one  man  who  was  describing 
some  steps  he  was  taking  to  remedy  certain 
defects,  interjected  casually:  "At  this  point 
I  had  to  go  under  for  a  little,  as  a  man  in  a 
boat  was  trying  to  grab  my  periscope  with 
his  hand."  No  reference  before  or  after  to 
the  said  man  or  his  fate.  Again:  "Came 
across  a  dhow  with  a  Turkish  skipper.  He 
seemed  so  miserable  that  I  let  him  go." 
And  elsewhere  in  those  waters,  a  submarine 
overhauled  a  steamer  full  of  Turkish  pas- 
sengers, some  of  whom,  arguing  on  their 
allies'  lines,  promptly  leaped  overboard.  Our 
boat  fished  them  out  and  returned  them,  for 
she  was  not  killing  civilians.  In  another 
affair,  which  included  several  ships  (now 
at  the  bottom)  and  one  submarine,  the 
commander  relaxes  enough  to  note  that: 
"The  men  behaved  very  well  under  direct 
and  flanking  fire  from  rifles  at  about  fifteen 
yards."  This  was  not,  I  believe,  the  sub- 
marine that  fought  the  Turkish  cavalry  on 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET  39 

the  beach.  And  in  addition  to  matters 
much  more  marvellous  than  any  I  have 
hinted  at,  the  reports  deal  with  repairs  and 
shifts  and  contrivances  carried  through  in 
the  face  of  dangers  that  read  like  the  last 
delirium  of  romance.  One  boat  went  down 
the  Straits  and  found  herself  rather  canted 
over  to  one  side.  A  mine  and  chain  had 
jammed  under  her  forward  diving-plane.  So 
far  as  I  made  out,  she  shook  it  off  by  stand- 
ing on  her  head  and  jerking  backwards;  or 
it  may  have  been,  for  the  thing  has  occurred 
more  than  once,  she  merely  rose  as  much  as 
she  could,  when  she  could,  and  then  "re- 
leased it  by  hand,"  as  the  official  phrase  goes. 

FOUR  NIGHTMARES 

And  who,  a  few  months  ago,  could  have 
invented,  or  having  invented,  would  have 
dared  to  print  such  a  nightmare  as  this: 
There  was  a  boat  in  the  North  Sea  who  ran 
into  a  net  and  was  caught  by  the  nose.  She 
rose,  still  entangled,  meaning  to  cut  the 
thing  away  on  the  surface.  But  a  Zeppelin 


40  SEA  WARFARE 

in  waiting  saw  and  bombed  her,  and  she 
had  to  go  down  again  at  once — but  not 
too  wildly  or  she  would  get  herself  more 
wrapped  up  than  ever.  She  went  down, 
and  by  slow  working  and  weaving  and 
wriggling,  guided  only  by  guesses  at  the 
meaning  of  each  scrape  and  grind  of  the  net 
on  her  blind  forehead,  at  last  she  drew  clear. 
Then  she  sat  on  the  bottom  and  thought. 
The  question  was  whether  she  should  go 
back  at  once  and  warn  her  confederates 
against  the  trap,  or  wait  till  the  destroyers 
which  she  knew  the  Zeppelin  would  have 
signalled  for,  should  come  out  to  finish  her 
still  entangled,  as  they  would  suppose,  in 
the  net?  It  was  a  simple  calculation  of 
comparative  speeds  and  positions,  and  when 
it  was  worked  out  she  decided  to  try  for 
the  double  event.  Within  a  few  minutes 
of  the  time  she  had  allowed  for  them,  she 
heard  the  twitter  of  four  destroyers'  screws 
quartering  above  her;  rose;  got  her  shot 
in;  saw  one  destroyer  crumple;  hung  round 
till  another  took  the  wreck  in  tow;  said 
good-bye  to  the  spare  brace  (she  was 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET  41 

at  the  end  of  her  supplies),  and  reached  the 
rendezvous  in  time  to  turn  her  friends. 

And  since  we  are  dealing  in  nightmares, 
here  are  two  more — one  genuine,  the  other, 
mercifully,  false.  There  was  a  boat  not 
only  at,  but  in  the  mouth  of  a  river — well 
home  in  German  territory.  She  was  spotted, 
and  went  under,  her  commander  per- 
fectly aware  that  there  was  not  more  than 
five  feet  of  water  over  her  conning-tower, 
so  that  even  a  torpedo-boat,  let  alone 
a  destroyer,  would  hit  it  if  she  came  over. 
But  nothing  hit  anything.  The  search 
was  conducted  on  scientific  principles  while 
they  sat  on  the  silt  and  suffered.  Then  the 
commander  heard  the  rasp  of  a  wire  trawl 
sweeping  over  his  hull.  It  was  not  a  nice 
sound,  but  there  happened  to  be  a  couple 
of  gramophones  aboard,  and  he  turned 
them  both  on  to  drown  it.  And  in  due 
time  that  boat  got  home  with  everybody's 
hair  of  just  the  same  colour  as  when  they 
had  started! 

The  other  nightmare  arose  out  of  silence 
and  imagination.  A  boat  had  gone  to  bed 


42  SEA  WARFARE 

on  the  bottom  in  a  spot  where  she  might 
reasonably  expect  to  be  looked  for,  but  it 
was  a  convenient  jumping-off,  or  up,  place 
for  the  work  in  hand.  About  the  bad  hour 
of  2 :30  A.  M.  the  commander  was  waked  by 
one  of  his  men,  who  whispered  to  him: 
"They've  got  the  chains  on  us,  sir!" 
Whether  it  was  pure  nightmare,  an  hal- 
lucination of  long  wakefulness,  something 
relaxing  and  releasing  in  that  packed  box 
of  machinery,  or  the  disgustful  reality,  the 
commander  could  not  tell,  but  it  had  all  the 
makings  of  panic  in  it.  So  the  Lord  and 
long  training  put  it  into  his  head  to  reply! 
"Have  they?  Well,  we  shan't  be  coming 
up  till  nine  o'clock  this  morning.  We'll 
see  about  it  then.  Turn  out  that  light, 
please." 

He  did  not  sleep,  but  the  dreamer  and 
the  others  did,  and  when  morning  came  and 
he  gave  the  order  to  rise,  and  she  rose  un- 
hampered, and  he  saw  the  grey,  smeared 
seas  from  above  once  again,  he  said  it  was 
a  very  refreshing  sight. 

Lastly,  which  is  on  all  fours  with  the 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET  43 

gamble  of  the  chase,  a  man  was  coming 
home  rather  bored  after  an  uneventful  trip. 
It  was  necessary  for  him  to  sit  on  the 
bottom  for  awhile,  and  there  be  played 
patience.  Of  a  sudden  it  struck  him,  as 
a  vow  and  an  omen,  that  if  he  worked  out 
the  next  game  correctly  he  would  go  up 
and  strafe  something.  The  cards  fell  all 
in  order.  He  went  up  at  once  and  found 
himself  alongside  a  German,  whom,  as  he 
had  promised  and  prophesied  to  himself, 
he  destroyed.  She  was  a  mine-layer,  and 
needed  only  a  jar  to  dissipate  like  a  cracked 
electric-light  bulb.  He  was  somewhat  im- 
pressed by  the  contrast  between  the  single- 
handed  game  fifty  feet  below,  the  ascent, 
the  attack,  the  amazing  result,  and  when 
he  descended  again,  his  cards  just  as  he  had 
left  them. 


THE  ships  destroy  us  above 

And  ensnare  us  beneath. 
We  arise,  we  lie  down,  and  we  move 

In  the  belly  of  Death. 

The  ships  have  a  thousand  eyes 
To  mark  where  we  come     .     .     . 

And  the  mirth  of  a  seaport  dies 
When  our  blow  gets  home. 


SUBMARINES 
U 

I  WAS  honoured  by  a  glimpse  into  this  veiled 
life  in  a  boat  which  was  merely  practising 
between  trips.  Submarines  are  like  cats. 
They  never  tell  "who  they  were  with  last 
night,"  and  they  sleep  as  much  as  they  can. 
If  you  board  a  submarine  off  duty  you 
generally  see  a  perspective  of  fore-shortened 
fattish  men  laid  all  along.  The  men  say 
that  except  at  certain  times  it  is  rather  an 
easy  life,  with  relaxed  regulations  about 
smoking,  calculated  to  make  a  man  put  on 
flesh.  One  requires  well-padded  nerves. 
Many  of  the  men  do  not  appear  on  deck 
throughout  the  whole  trip.  After  all,  why 
should  they  if  they  don't  want  to?  They 
know  that  they  are  responsible  in  their 

47 


48  SEA  WARFARE 

department  for  their  comrades'  lives  as  their 
comrades  are  responsible  for  theirs.  What's 
the  use  of  flapping  about?  Better  lay  in 
some  magazines  and  cigarettes. 

When  we  set  forth  there  had  been  some 
trouble  in  the  fairway,  and  a  mined  neutral, 
whose  misfortune  all  bore  with  exemplary 
calm,  was  careened  on  a  near-by  shoal. 

"Suppose  there  are  more  mines  knocking 
about?"  I  suggested. 

"We'll  hope  there  aren't,"  was  the  sooth- 
ing reply.  "  Mines  are  all  Joss.  You  either 
hit  'em  or  you  don't.  And  if  you  do, 
they  don't  always  go  off.  They  scrape 
alongside." 

"What's  the  etiquette  then?" 

"Shut  off  both  propellers  and  hope." 

We  were  dodging  various  craft  down  the 
harbour  when  a  squadron  of  trawlers  came 
out  on  our  beam,  at  that  extravagant  rate 
of  speed  which  unlimited  Government  coal 
always  leads  to.  They  were  led  by  an 
ugly,  upstanding,  black-sided  buccaneer 
with  twelve-pounders. 

"Ah!    That's  the  King  of  the  Trawlers. 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET    49 

Isn't    he    carrying    dog,    too!     Give    him 
room!"  one  said. 

We  were  all  in  the  narrowed  harbour 
mouth  together. 

*  There's  my  youngest  daughter.  Take 
a  look  at  her!'"  some  one  hummed  as  a 
punctilious  navy  cap  slid  by  on  a  very  near 
bridge. 

"We'll  fall  in  behind  him.  They're  going 
over  to  the  neutral.  Then  they'll  sweep. 
By  the  bye,  did  you  hear  about  one  of  the 
passengers  in  the  neutral  yesterday?  He  was 
taken  off,  of  course,  by  a  destroyer,  and  the 
only  thing  he  said  was:  *  Twenty-five  time 
I  'ave  insured,  but  not  this  time.  .  .  . 
'Angit!'" 

The  trawlers  lunged  ahead  toward  the 
forlorn  neutral.  Our  destroyer  nipped  past 
us  with  that  high-shouldered,  terrier-like 
pouncing  action  of  the  newer  boats,  and 
went  ahead.  A  tramp  in  ballast,  her  pro- 
peller half  out  of  water,  threshed  along 
through  the  sallow  haze. 

"Lord!  What  a  shot!"  somebody  said 
enviously.  The  men  on  the  little  deck 


50  SEA  WARFARE 

looked  across  at  the  slow-moving  silhouette. 
One  of  them,  a  cigarette  behind  his  ear, 
smiled  at  a  companion. 

Then  we  went  down — not  as  they  go 
when  they  are  pressed  (the  record,  I  believe, 
is  50  feet  in  50  seconds  from  top  to  bottom), 
but  genteelly,  to  an  orchestra  of  appropriate 
sounds,  roarings,  and  blowings,  and  after  the 
orders,  which  come  from  the  commander 
alone,  utter  silence  and  peace. 

"There's  the  bottom.  We  bumped  at 
fifty — fifty-two,"  he  said. 

"I  didn't  feel  it." 

"We'll  try  again.  Watch  the  gauge, 
and  you'll  see  it  flick  a  little." 

THE  PRACTICE  OF  THE  ART 

It  may  have  been  so,  but  I  was  more 
interested  in  the  faces,  and  above  all  the 
eyes,  all  down  the  length  of  her.  It  was  to 
them,  of  course,  the  simplest  of  manoeuvres. 
They  dropped  into  gear  as  no  machine  could ; 
but  the  training  of  years  and  the  experience 
of  the  year  leaped  up  behind  those  steady 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET  51 

eyes  under  the  electrics  in  the  shadow  of 
the  tall  motors,  between  the  pipes  and  the 
curved  hull,  or  glued  to  their  special  gauges. 
One  forgot  the  bodies  altogether — but  one 
will  never  forget  the  eyes  or  the  ennobled 
faces.  One  man  I  remember  in  particular. 
On  deck  his  was  no  more  than  a  grave, 
rather  striking  countenance,  cast  in  the  un- 
mistakable petty  officer's  mould.  Below,  as 
I  saw  him  in  profile  handling  a  vital  control, 
he  looked  like  the  Doge  of  Venice,  the 
Prior  of  some  sternly-ruled  monastic  order, 
an  old-time  Pope — anything  that  signifies 
trained  and  stored  intellectual  power  utterly 
and  ascetically  devoted  to  some  vast  im- 
personal end.  And  so  with  a  much  younger 
man,  who  changed  into  such  a  monk  as 
Frank  Dicksee  used  to  draw.  Only  a  couple 
of  torpedo-men,  not  being  in  gear  for  the 
moment,  read  an  illustrated  paper.  Their 
time  did  not  come  till  we  went  up  and  got 
to  business,  which  meant  firing  at  our 
destroyer,  and,  I  think,  keeping  out  of  the 
light  of  a  friend's  torpedoes. 

The  attack  and  everything  connected  with 


52  SEA  WARFARE 

it  is  solely  the  commander's  affair.  He  is 
the  only  one  who  gets  any  fun  at  all — since 
he  is  the  eye,  the  brain,  and  the  hand  of  the 
whole — this  single  figure  at  the  periscope. 
The  second  in  command  heaves  sighs,  and 
prays  that  the  dummy  torpedo  (there  is  less 
trouble  about  the  live  ones)  will  go  off  all 
right,  or  he'll  be  told  about  it.  The  others 
wait  and  follow  the  quick  run  of  orders.  It 
is,  if  not  a  convention,  a  fairly  established 
custom  that  the  commander  shall  inferenti- 
ally  give  his  world  some  idea  of  what  is 
going  on.  At  least,  I  only  heard  of  one 
man  who  says  nothing  whatever,  and  doesn't 
even  wriggle  his  shoulders  when  he  is  on 
the  sight.  The  others  soliloquise,  etc., 
according  to  their  temperament;  and  the 
periscope  is  as  revealing  as  golf. 

Submarines  nowadays  are  expected  to 
look  out  for  themselves  more  than  at  the 
old  practices,  when  the  destroyers  walked 
circumspectly.  We  dived  and  circulated 
under  water  for  a  while,  and  then  rose  for  a 
sight — something  like  this:  "Up  a  little — 
up!  Up  still!  Where  the  deuce  has  he 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET  53 

got  to — Ah!  (Half  a  dozen  orders  as  to 
helm  and  depth  of  descent,  and  a  pause 
broken  by  a  drumming  noise  somewhere 
above,  which  increases  and  passes  away.) 
That's  better!  Up  again!  (This  refers  to 
the  periscope.)  Yes.  Ah!  No,  we  don't 
think!  All  right!  Keep  her  down,  damn 
it!  Umm!  That  ought  to  be  nineteen 
knots.  .  .  .  Dirty  trick!  He's  changing 
speed.  No,  he  isn't.  He's  all  right.  Ready 
forward  there !  (A  valve  sputters  and  drips, 
the  torpedo-men  crouch  over  their  tubes  and 
nod  to  themselves.  Their  faces  have 
changed  now.)  He  hasn't  spotted  us  yet. 
We'll  ju-ust — (more  helm  and  depth  orders, 
but  specially  helm) — 'Wish  we  were  working 
a  beam-tube.  Ne'er  mind!  Up!  (A  last 
string  of  orders.)  Six  hundred,  and  he 
doesn't  see  us!  Fire!" 

The  dummy  left;  the  second  in  command 
cocked  one  ear  and  looked  relieved.  Up  we 
rose;  the  wet  air  and  spray  spattered  through 
the  hatch;  the  destroyer  swung  off  to  re- 
trieve the  dummy. 

"Careless  brutes  destroyers  are,"  said  one 


54  SEA  WARFARE 

officer.  "That  fellow  nearly  walked  over 
us  just  now.  Did  you  notice?" 

The  commander  was  playing  his  game  out 
over  again — stroke  by  stroke.  "With  a 
beam-tube  I'd  ha'  strafed  him  amidships," 
he  concluded. 

"Why  didn't  you  then?"  I  asked. 

There  were  loads  of  shiny  reasons,  which 
reminded  me  that  we  were  at  war  and 
cleared  for  action,  and  that  the  interlude 
had  been  merely  play.  A  companion  rose 
alongside  and  wanted  to  know  whether  we 
had  seen  anything  of  her  dummy. 

"No.  But  we  heard  it,"  was  the  short 
answer. 

I  was  rather  annoyed,  because  I  had  seen 
that  particular  daughter  of  destruction  on 
the  stocks  only  a  short  time  ago,  and  here 
she  was  grown  up  and  talking  about  her 
missing  children! 

In  the  harbour  again,  one  found  more 
submarines,  all  patterns  and  makes  and 
sizes,  with  rumours  of  yet  more  and  larger  to 
follow.  Naturally  their  men  say  that  we 
are  only  at  the  beginning  of  the  submarine. 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET  55 

We  shall  have  them  presently  for  all 
purposes. 

THE  MAN  AND  THE  WORK 

Now  here  is  a  mystery  of  the  Service. 
A  man  gets  a  boat  which  for  two  years 
becomes  his  very  self — 

His  morning  hope»  his  evening  dream, 
His  joy  throughout  the  day. 

With  him  is  a  second  in  command,  an 
engineer,  and  some  others.  They  prove 
each  other's  souls  habitually  every  few  days, 
by  the  direct  test  of  peril,  till  they  act, 
think,  and  endure  as  a  unit,  in  and  with  the 
boat.  That  commander  is  transferred  to 
another  boat.  He  tries  to  take  with  him  if 
he  can,  which  he  can't,  as  many  of  his  other 
selves  as  possible.  He  is,  pitched  into  a  new 
type  twice  the  size  of  the  old  one,  with  three 
times  as  many  gadgets,  an  unexplored  tem- 
perament and  unknown  leanings.  After  his 
first  trip  he  comes  back  clamouring  for  the 
head  of  her  constructor,  of  his  own  second 
in  command,  his  engineer,  his  cox,  and  a  few 


56  SEA  WARFARE 

other  ratings.  They  for  their  part  wish  him 
dead  on  the  beach,  because,  last  commission 
with  So-and-so,  nothing  ever  went  wrong 
anywhere.  A  fortnight  later  you  can  remind 
the  commander  of  what  he  said,  and  he  will 
deny  every  word  of  it.  She's  not,  he  says, 
so  very  vile — things  considered — barring  her 
five-ton  torpedo-derricks,  the  abominations 
of  her  wireless,  and  the  tropical  temperature 
of  her  beer-lockers.  All  of  which  signifies 
that  the  new  boat  has  found  her  soul,  and 
her  commander  would  not  change  her  for 
battle-cruisers.  Therefore,  that  he  may  re- 
member he  is  the  Service  and  not  a  branch 
of  it,  he  is  after  certain  seasons  shifted  to  a 
battle-cruiser,  where  he  lives  in  a  blaze  of 
admirals  and  aiguillettes,  responsible  for 
vast  decks  and  crypt-like  flats,  a  student  of 
extended  above-water  tactics,  thinking  in 
tens  of  thousands  of  yards  instead  of  his 
modest  but  deadly  three  to  twelve  hundred. 
And  the  man  who  takes  his  place  straight- 
way forgets  that  he  ever  looked  down  on 
great  rollers  from  a  sixty-foot  bridge  under 
the  whole  breadth  of  heaven,  but  crawls  and 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET  57 

climbs  and  dives  through  conning-towers 
with  those  same  waves  wet  in  his  neck,  and 
when  the  cruisers  pass  him,  tearing  the  deep 
open  in  half  a  gale,  thanks  God  he  is  not 
as  they  are,  and  goes  to  bed  beneath  their 
distracted  keels. 


EXPERT  OPINIONS 

"But  submarine  work  is  cold-blooded 
business." 

(This  was  at  a  little  session  in  a  green- 
curtained  "wardroom"  cum  owner's  cabin.) 

"Then  there's  no  truth  in  the  yarn  that 
you  can  feel  when  the  torpedo's  going  to 
get  home?"  I  asked. 

"Not  a  word.  You  sometimes  see  it 
get  home,  or  miss,  as  the  case  may  be.  Of 
course,  it's  never  your  fault  if  it  misses. 
It's  all  your  second  in  command." 

"That's  true,  too,"  said  the  second.  "I 
catch  it  all  round.  That's  what  I  am  here  f  or. " 

"And  what  about  the  third  man?" 
There  was  one  aboard  at  the  time. 

"He    generally   comes    from    a    smaller 


58  SEA  WARFARE 

boat,  to  pick  up  real  work — if  he  can  sup- 
press his  intellect  and  doesn't  talk   'last 


commission. ' 


The  third  hand  promptly  denied  the 
possession  of  any  intellect,  and  was  quite 
dumb  about  his  last  boat. 

"And  the  men?" 

"They  train  on,  too.  They  train  each 
other.  Yes,  one  gets  to  know  'em  about  as 
well  as  they  get  to  know  us.  Up  topside, 
a  man  can  take  you  in — take  himself  in — 
for  months;  for  half  a  commission,  p'rhaps. 
Down  below  he  can't.  It's  all  in  cold  blood 
— not  like  at  the  front,  where  they  have 
something  exciting  all  the  time." 

"Then  bumping  mines  isn't  exciting?" 

"Not  one  little  bit.  You  can't  bump 
back  at  'em.  Even  with  a  Zepp— 

"Oh,  now  and  then,"  one  interrupted, 
and  they  laughed  as  they  explained. 

"Yes,  that  was  rather  funny.  One  of 
our  boats  came  up  slap  underneath  a  low 
Zepp.  'Looked  for  the  sky,  you  know, 
and  couldn't  see  anything  except  this  fat, 
shining  belly  almost  on  top  of  'em.  Luckily, 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET  59 

it  wasn't  the  Zepp's  stingin'  end.  So  our 
boat  went  to  windward  and  kept  just  awash. 
There  was  a  bit  of  a  sea,  and  the  Zepp  had 
to  work  against  the  wind.  (They  don't  like 
that.)  Our  boat  sent  a  man  to  the  gun. 
He  was  pretty  well  drowned,  of  course,  but 
he  hung  on,  choking  and  spitting,  and  held 
his  breath,  and  got  in  shots  where  he  could. 
This  Zepp  was  strafing  bombs  about  for 
all  she  was  worth,  and — who  was  it? — 
Macartney,  I  think,  potting  at  her  between 
dives;  and  naturally  all  hands  wanted  to 
look  at  the  performance,  so  about  half  the 
North  Sea  flopped  down  below  and — oh, 
they  had  a  Charlie  Chaplin  time  of  it! 
Well,  somehow,  Macartney  managed  to  rip 
the  Zepp  a  bit,  and  she  went  to  leeward 
with  a  list  on  her.  We  saw  her  a  fortnight 
later  with  a  patch  on  her  port  side.  Oh,  if 
Fritz  only  fought  clean,  this  wouldn't  be  half 
a  bad  show.  But  Fritz  can't  fight  clean." 

"And  we  can't  do  what  he  does — even 
if  we  were  allowed  to,"  one  said. 

"No,  we  can't.  'Tisn't  done.  We  have 
to  fish  Fritz  out  of  the  water,  dry  him,  and 


60  SEA  WARFARE 

give  him  cocktails,  and  send  him  to  Don- 
nington  Hall." 

"And  what  does  Fritz  do?"  I  asked. 

"He  sputters  and  clicks  and  bows.  He 
has  all  the  correct  motions,  you  know;  but, 
of  course,  when  he's  your  prisoner  you  can't 
tell  him  what  he  really  is." 

"And  do  you  suppose  Fritz  understands 
any  of  it?"  I  went  on. 

"No.  Or  he  wouldn't  have  lusitaniaed. 
This  war  was  his  first  chance  of  making  his 
name,  and  he  chucked  it  all  away  for  the 
sake  of  showin'  off  as  a  foul  Gottstrafer." 

And  they  talked  of  that  hour  of  the 
night  when  submarines  come  to  the  top  like 
mermaids  to  get  and  give  information;  of 
boats  whose  business  it  is  to  fire  as  much 
and  to  splash  about  as  aggressively  as 
possible;  and  of  other  boats  who  avoid  any 
sort  of  display — dumb  boats  watching  and 
relieving  watch,  with  their  periscope  just 
showing  like  a  crocodile's  eye,  at  the  back 
of  islands  and  the  mouths  of  channels  where 
something  may  some  day  move  out  in  pro- 
cession to  its  doom. 


BE  well  assured  that  on  our  side 

Our  challenged  oceans  fight, 
Though  headlong  wind  and  heaping  tide 

Make  us  their  sport  to-night. 
Through  force  of  weather,  not  of  war, 

In  jeopardy  we  steer. 
Then,  welcome  Fate's  discourtesy 
Whereby  it  shall  appear 

How  in  all  time  of  our  distress 

As  in  our  triumph  too, 

The  game  is  more  than  the  player  of  the 

game, 
And  the  ship  is  more  than  the  crew  ! 

Be  well  assured,  though  wave  and  wind 

Have  mightier  blows  in  store, 
That  we  who  keep  the  watch  assigned 

Must  stand  to  it  the  more; 
And  as  our  streaming  bows  dismiss 

Each  billow's  baulked  career, 

61 


62  SEA  WARFARE 

Sing,  welcome  Fate's  discourtesy 
Whereby  it  is  made  clear 

How  in  all  time  of  our  distress 

As  in  our  triumph  too, 

The  game  is  more  than  the  player  of  the 

game, 
And  the  ship  is  more  than  the  crew  ! 

Be  well  assured,  though  in  our  power 

Is  nothing  left  to  give 
But  time  and  place  to  meet  the  hour 

And  leave  to  strive  to  live, 
Till  these  dissolve  our  Order  holds, 

Our  Service  binds  us  here. 
Then,  welcome  Fate's  discourtesy 
Whereby  it  is  made  clear 
How  in  all  time  of  our  distress 
And  our  deliverance  too, 
The  game  is  more  than  the  player  of  the 

game, 
And  the  ship  is  more  than  the  crew  ! 


PATROLS 


ON  THE  edge  of  the  North  Sea  sits  an 
Admiral  in  charge  of  a  stretch  of  coast 
without  lights  or  marks,  along  which  the 
traffic  moves  much  as  usual.  In  front  of 
him  there  is  nothing  but  the  east  wind,  the 
enemy  and  some  few  of  our  ships.  Behind 
him  there  are  towns,  with  M.P.'s  attached, 
who  a  little  while  ago  didn't  see  the  reason 
for  certain  lighting  orders.  When  a  Zep- 
pelin or  two  came,  they  saw.  Left  and 
right  of  him  are  enormous  docks,  with  vast 
crowded  sheds,  miles  of  stone-faced  quay- 
edges,  loaded  with  all  manner  of  supplies 
and  crowded  with  mixed  shipping. 

In   this   exalted    world    one    met    staff- 
captains,    staff-commanders,    staff-lieuten- 

63 


64  SEA  WARFARE 

ants,  and  secretaries,  with  paymasters  so 
senior  that  they  almost  ranked  with  ad- 
mirals. There  were  warrant  officers,  too, 
who  long  ago  gave  up  splashing  about  decks 
barefoot,  and  now  check  and  issue  stores 
to  the  ravenous,  untruthful  fleets.  Said 
one  of  these,  guarding  a  collection  of 
desirable  things,  to  a  cross  between  a  sick- 
bay attendant  and  a  junior  writer  (but  he 
was  really  an  expert  burglar),  "No!  An' 
you  can  tell  Mr.  So-and-so,  with  my  com- 
pliments, that  the  storekeeper's  gone  away 
— right  away — with  the  key  of  these  stores 
in  his  pocket.  Understand  me?  In  his 
trousers  pocket." 

He  snorted  at  my  next  question. 

"Do  I  know  any  destroyer-loo  tenants?" 
said  he.  "This  coast's  rank  with  'em! 
Destroyer-lootenants  are  born  stealing.  It's 
a  mercy  they's  too  busy  to  practise  forgery, 
or  I'd  be  in  gaol.  Engineer-commanders? 
Engineer-loo  tenants?  They 're  worse !  .  .  . 
Look  here !  If  my  own  mother  was  to  come 
to  me  beggin'  brass  screws  for  her  own 
coffin,  I'd — I'd  think  twice  before  I'd 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET  65 

oblige  the  old  lady.  War's  war,  I  grant 
you  that;  but  what  I've  got  to  contend 
with  is  crime." 

I  referred  to  him  a  case  of  conscience  in 
which  every  one  concerned  acted  exactly 
as  he  should,  and  it  nearly  ended  in  murder. 
During  a  lengthy  action,  the  working  of  a 
gun  was  hampered  by  some  empty  cartridge- 
cases  which  the  lieutenant  in  charge  made 
signs  (no  man  could  hear  his  neighbour 
speak  just  then)  should  be  hove  overboard. 
Upon  which  the  gunner  rushed  forward 
and  made  other  signs  that  they  were  "on 
charge,"  and  must  be  tallied  and  accounted 
for.  He,  too,  was  trained  in  a  strict  school. 
Upon  which  the  lieutenant,  but  that  he 
was  busy,  would  have  slain  the  gunner  for 
refusing  orders  in  action.  Afterwards  he 
wanted  him  shot  by  court-martial.  But 
every  one  was  voiceless  by  then,  and  could 
only  mouth  and  croak  at  each  other,  till 
somebody  laughed,  and  the  pedantic  gunner 
was  spared. 

"Well,  that's  what  you  might  fairly 
call  a  naval  crux,"  said  my  friend  among 


66  SEA  WARFARE 

the  stores.  "The  lootenant  was  right. 
'Mustn't  refuse  orders  in  action.  The 
gunner  was  right.  Empty  cases  are  on 
charge.  No  one  ought  to  chuck  'em  away 
that  way,  but  .  .  .  Damn  it,  they  were 
all  of  'em  right!  It  ought  to  ha'  been  a 
marine.  Then  they  could  have  killed  him 
and  preserved  discipline  at  the  same  time." 

A  LITTLE  THEORY 

The  problem  of  this  coast  resolves  itself 
into  keeping  touch  with  the  enemy's  move- 
ments; in  preparing  matters  to  trap  and 
hinder  him  when  he  moves,  and  in  so 
entertaining  him  that  he  shall  not  have 
time  to  draw  clear  before  a  blow  descends 
on  him  from  another  quarter.  There  are 
then  three  lines  of  defence:  the  outer,  the 
inner,  and  the  home  waters.  The  traffic 
and  fishing  are  always  with  us. 

The  blackboard  idea  of  it  is  always  to 
have  stronger  forces  more  immediately 
available  everywhere  than  those  the  enemy 
can  send,  x  German  submarines  draw  a 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET  67 

English  destroyers.  Then  x  calls  x  +  y  to 
deal  with  a,  who,  in  turn,  calls  up  6,  a  scout, 
and  possibly  a8,  with  a  fair  chance  that,  if 
x  +  y  +  z  (a  Zeppelin)  carry  on,  they  will 
run  into  a2  +  62  +  c  cruisers.  At  this  point, 
the  equation  generally  stops;  if  it  continued 
it  would  end  mathematically  in  the  whole 
of  the  German  Fleet  coming  out.  Then 
another  factor  which  we  may  call  the  Grand 
Fleet  would  come  from  another  place.  To 
change  the  comparisons:  the  Grand  Fleet 
is  the  "strong  left"  ready  to  give  the 
knock-out  blow  on  the  point  of  the  chin 
when  the  head  is  thrown  up.  The  other 
fleets  and  other  arrangements  threaten  the 
enemy's  solar  plexus  and  stomach.  Some- 
where in  relation  to  the  Grand  Fleet  lies 
the  "blockading"  cordon  which  examines 
neutral  traffic.  It  could  be  drawn  as  tight 
as  a  Turkish  bowstring,  but  for  reasons 
which  we  may  arrive  at  after  the  war,  it 
does  not  seem  to  have  been  so  drawn  up 
to  date. 

The  enemy  lies  behind  his  mines,  and 
ours,  raids  our  coasts  when  he  sees  a  chance, 


68  SEA  WARFARE 

and  kills  seagoing  civilians  at  sight  or  guess, 
with  intent  to  terrify.  Most  sailor-men  are 
mixed  up  with  a  woman  or  two;  a  fair 
percentage  of  them  have  seen  men  drown. 
They  can  realise  what  it  is  when  women 
go  down  choking  in  horrible  tangles  and 
heavings  of  draperies.  To  say  that  the 
enemy  has  cut  himself  from  the  fellowship 
of  all  who  use  the  seas  is  rather  understating 
the  case.  As  a  man  observed  thoughtfully: 
"You  can't  look  at  any  water  now  without 
seeing  'Lusitania'  sprawlin'  all  across  it. 
And  just  think  of  those  words,  *  North- 
German  Lloyd,'  '  Hamburg- Amerika '  and 
such  things,  in  the  time  to  come.  They 
simply  mustn't  be." 

He  was  an  elderly  trawler,  respectable 
as  they  make  them,  who,  after  many  years 
of  fishing,  had  discovered  his  real  vocation. 
"I  never  thought  I'd  like  killin'  men,"  he 
reflected.  "Never  seemed  to  be  any  o'  my 
dooty.  But  it  is — and  I  do!" 

A  great  deal  of  the  East  Coast  work 
concerns  mine-fields — ours  and  the  enemy's 
— both  of  which  shift  as  occasion  requires. 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET   69 

We  search  for  and  root  out  the  enemy's 
mines;  they  do  the  like  by  us.  It  is  a 
perpetual  game  of  finding,  springing,  and 
laying  traps  on  the  least  as  well  as  the  most 
likely  runways  that  ships  use — such  sea 
snaring  and  wiring  as  the  world  never 
dreamt  of.  We  are  hampered  in  this, 
because  our  Navy  respects  neutrals;  and 
spends  a  great  deal  of  its  time  in  making 
their  path  safe  for  them.  The  enemy  does 
not.  He  blows  them  up,  because  that  cows 
and  impresses  them,  and  so  adds  to  his 
prestige. 

DEATH  AND  THE  DESTROYER 

The  easiest  way  of  finding  a  mine-field 
is  to  steam  into  it,  on  the  edge  of  night  for 
choice,  with  a  steep  sea  running,  for  that 
brings  the  bows  down  like  a  chopper  on 
the  detonator-horns.  Some  boats  have 
enjoyed  this  experience  and  still  live.  There 
was  one  destroyer  (and  there  may  have 
been  others  since)  who  came  through  twenty 
four  hours  of  highly  compressed  life.  She 


70  SEA  WARFARE 

had  an  idea  that  there  was  a  mine-field 
somewhere  about,  and  left  her  companions 
behind  while  she  explored.  The  weather 
was  dead  calm,  and  she  walked  delicately. 
She  saw  one  Scandinavian  steamer  blow  up 
a  couple  of  miles  away,  rescued  the  skipper 
and  some  hands;  saw  another  neutral,  which 
she  could  not  reach  till  all  was  over,  skied 
in  another  direction;  and,  between  her  life- 
saving  efforts  and  her  natural  curiosity,  got 
herself  as  thoroughly  mixed  up  with  the 
field  as  a  camel  among  tent-ropes.  A 
destroyer's  bows  are  very  fine,  and  her  sides 
are  very  straight.  This  causes  her  to  cleave 
the  wave  with  the  minimum  of  disturbance, 
and  this  boat  had  no  desire  to  cleave  any- 
thing else.  None  the  less,  from  time  to 
time,  she  heard  a  mine  grate,  or  tinkle,  or 
jar  (I  could  not  arrive  at  the  precise  note  it 
strikes,  but  they  say  it  is  unpleasant)  on 
her  plates.  Sometimes  she  would  be  free 
of  them  for  a  long  while,  and  began  to 
hope  she  was  clear.  At  other  times  they 
were  numerous,  but  when  at  last  she  seemed 
to  have  worried  out  of  the  danger  zone, 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET   71 

lieutenant  and  sub  together  left  the  bridge 
for  a  cup  of  tea.  ("In  those  days  we  took 
mines  very  seriously,  you  know.")  As  they 
were  in  act  to  drink,  they  heard  the  hateful 
sound  again  just  outside  the  wardroom. 
Both  put  their  cups  down  with  extreme 
care,  little  fingers  extended  ("We  felt  as 
if  they  might  blow  up,  too"),  and  tip-toed 
on  deck,  where  they  met  the  foc'sle  also  on 
tip-toe.  They  pulled  themselves  together, 
and  asked  severely  what  the  foc'sle  thought 
it  was  doing.  "Beg  pardon,  sir,  but  there's 
another  of  those  blighters  tap-tapping  along- 
side, our  end."  They  all  waited  and  lis- 
tened to  their  common  coffin  being  nailed 
by  Death  himself.  But  the  things  bumped 
away.  At  this  point  they  thought  it  only 
decent  to  invite  the  rescued  skipper,  warm 
and  blanketed  in  one  of  their  bunks,  to  step 
up  and  do  any  further  perishing  in  the  open. 

"No,  thank  you,"  said  he.  "Last  time 
I  was  blown  up  in  my  bunk,  too.  That 
was  all  right.  So  I  think,  now,  too,  I  stay 
in  my  bunk  here.  It  is  cold  upstairs." 

Somehow  or  other  they  got  out  of  the 


72  SEA  WARFARE 

mess  after  all.  "Yes,  we  used  to  take 
mines  awfully  seriously  in  those  days.  One 
comfort  is,  Fritz'll  take  them  seriously  when 
he  comes  out.  Fritz  don't  like  mines." 

"Who  does?"  I  wanted  to  know. 

"If  you'd  been  here  a  little  while  ago, 
you'd  seen  a  commander  comin'  in  with  a 
big  'un  slung  under  his  counter.  He 
brought  the  beastly  thing  in  to  analyse. 
The  rest  of  his  squadron  followed  at  two- 
knot  intervals,  and  everything  in  harbour 
that  had  steam  up  scattered." 

THE  ADMIRABLE  COMMANDER 

Presently  I  had  the  honour  to  meet 
a  lieutenant-commander-admiral  who  had 
retired  from  the  service,  but,  like  others, 
had  turned  out  again  at  the  first  flash  of 
the  guns,  and  now  commands — he  who  had 
great  ships  erupting  at  his  least  signal — a 
squadron  of  trawlers  for  the  protection  of  the 
Dogger  Bank  Fleet.  At  present  prices — let 
alone  the  chance  of  the  paying  submarine 
— men  would  fish  in  much  warmer  places. 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET  73 

His  flagship  was  once  a  multi-millionaire's 
private  yacht.  In  her  mixture  of  stark, 
carpetless,  curtainless,  carbolised  present, 
with  voluptuously  curved,  broad-decked, 
easy-stairwayed  past,  she  might  be  Queen 
Guinevere  in  the  convent  at  Amesbury. 
And  her  lieutenant-commander,  most 
careful  to  pay  all  due  compliments  to 
admirals  who  were  midshipmen  when  he 
was  a  commander,  leads  a  congregation  of 
very  hard  men  indeed.  They  do  precisely 
what  he  tells  them  to,  and  with  him  go 
through  strange  experiences,  because  they 
love  him  and  because  his  language  is 
volcanic  and  wonderful — what  you  might 
call  Popocatapocalyptic.  I  saw  the  Old 
Navy  making  ready  to  lead  out  the  New 
under  a  grey  sky  and  a  falling  glass — the 
wisdom  and  cunning  of  the  old  man  backed 
up  by  the  passion  and  power  of  the  younger 
breed,  and  the  discipline  which  had  been 
his  soul  for  half  a  century  binding  them  all. 

"What'll  he  do  this  time?"  I  asked  of 
one  who  might  know. 

"He'll  cruise  between  Two  and  Three 


74  SEA  WARFARE 

East;  but  if  you'll  tell  me  what  he  wo> 
do,  it  'ud  be  more  to  the  point !  He's  min 
hunting,  I  expect,  just  now." 

WASTED  MATERIAL 

Here   is   a   digression   suggested   by   tl 
sight  of  a  man  I  had  known  in  other  scene 
despatch-riding  round  a  fleet  in  a  petrc 
launch.      There    are    many    of    his    typ 
yachtsmen    of    sorts    accustomed    to    tal 
chances,  who  do  not  hold  masters'  certii 
cates  and  cannot  be  given  sea-going  con 
mands.     Like  my  friend,  they  do  generi 
utility    work — often    in    their    own    boati 
This  is  a  waste  of  good  material.    Nobod 
wants  amateur  navigators — the  traffic  lane 
are   none   too   wide   as    it    is.      But   the? 
gentlemen  ought  to  be  distributed  amc 
the   Trawler   Fleet   as    strictly   combat 
officers.      A    trawler    skipper    may    be 
excellent  seaman,  but  slow  with  a  subma 
shelling  and  diving,  or  in  cutting  out  ene 
trawlers.    The  young  ones  who  can  masx 
Q.F.  gun  work  in  a  very  short  time  woul 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET   75 

-though  there  might  be  friction,  a  court- 
artial  or  two,  and  probably  losses  at  first 
pay  for  their  keep.  Even  a  hundred  or 

of  amateurs,  more  or  less  controlled  by 
eir  squadron  commanders,  would  make  a 

)py  beginning,  and  I  am  sure  they  would 

be  extremely  grateful. 


WHERE  the  East  wind  is  brewed  fresh  and 

fresh  every  morning, 
And  the  balmy  night-breezes  blow  straight 

from  the  Pole, 

I  heard  a  destroyer  sing:  "What  an  enjoya- 
ble life  does  one  lead  on  the  North   Sea 
Patrol ! 

"To  blow  things  to  bits  is  our  business  (and 

Fritz's), 
Which  means  there  are  mine-fields  wherever 

you  stroll. 
Unless  you've  particular  wish  to  die  quick, 

you'll  a- 
void  steering  close  to  the  North  Sea  Patrol. 

"We    warn   from    disaster    the    mercantile 

master 

Who  takes  in  high  dudgeon  our  life-saving 
role, 

77 


78  SEA  WARFARE 

For   every    one's   grousing    at   docking    and 

dowsing 

The  marks  and  the  lights  on  the  North 
Sea  Patrol:1 

[Twelve  verses  omitted.] 

So   swept   but   surviving,   half  drowned   but 

still  driving, 
I  watched  her  head  out  through  the  swell  off 

the  shoaly 
And  I  heard  her  propellers  roar:     "Write 

to  poor  fellers 
Who  run  such  a  HeU  as  the  North  Sea 

Patrol!" 


PATROLS 
II 

THE  great  basins  were  crammed  with  craft 
of  kinds  never  know  before  on  any  Navy 
List.  Some  were  as  they  were  born,  others 
had  been  converted,  and  a  multitude  have 
been  designed  for  special  cases.  The  Navy 
prepares  against  all  contingencies  by  land, 
sea,  and  air.  It  was  a  relief  to  meet  a 
batch  of  comprehensible  destroyers  and  to 
drop  again  into  the  little  mouse-trap  ward- 
rooms, which  are  as  large-hearted  as  all  Our 
oceans.  The  men  one  used  to  know  as 
destroyer-lieutenants  ("born  stealing")  are 
serious  commanders  and  captains  to-day, 
but  their  sons,  lieutenants  in  command 
and  lieutenant-commanders,  do  follow 
them.  The  sea  in  peace  is  a  hard  life; 

79 


80  SEA  WARFARE 

war  only  sketches  an  extra  line  or  two 
round  the  young  mouths.  The  routine  of 
ships  always  ready  for  action  is  so  part  of 
the  blood  now  that  no  one  notices  anything 
except  the  absence  of  formality  and  of  the 
"crimes"  of  peace.  What  warrant  officers 
used  to  say  at  length  is  cut  down  to  a 
grunt.  What  the  sailor-man  did  not  know 
and  expected  to  have  told  him,  does  not 
exist.  He  has  done  it  all  too  often  at  sea 
and  ashore. 

I  watched  a  little  party  working  under 
a  leading  hand  at  a  job  which,  eighteen 
months  ago,  would  have  required  a  gunner 
in  charge.  It  was  comic  to  see  his  orders 
trying  to  overtake  the  execution  of  them. 
Ratings  coming  aboard  carried  themselves 
with  a  (to  me)  new  swing — not  swank,  but 
consciousness  of  adequacy.  The  high,  dark 
foc'sles  which,  thank  goodness,  are  only 
washed  twice  a  week,  received  them  and 
their  bags,  and  they  turned-to  on  the 
instant  as  a  man  picks  up  his  life  at  home. 
Like  the  submarine  crew,  they  come  to 
be  a  breed  apart — double- jointed,  extra- 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET  81 

toed,  with  brazen  bowels  and  no  sort  of 
nerves. 

It  is  the  same  in  the  engine-room,  when 
the  ships  come  in  for  their  regular  looking- 
over.  Those  who  love  them,  which  you 
would  never  guess  from  the  language, 
know  exactly  what  they  need,  and  get  it 
without  fuss.  Everything  that  steams  has 
her  individual  peculiarity,  and  the  great 
thing  is,  at  overhaul,  to  keep  to  it  and  not 
develop  a  new  one.  If,  for  example,  through 
some  trick  of  her  screws  not  synchronising, 
a  destroyer  always  casts  to  port  when  she 
goes  astern,  do  not  let  any  zealous  soul  try 
to  make  her  run  true,  or  you  will  have  to 
learn  her  helm  all  over  again.  And  it 
is  vital  that  you  should  know  exactly 
what  your  ship  is  going  to  do  three  seconds 
before  she  does  it.  Similarly  with  men. 
If  any  one,  from  lieutenant-commander  to 
stoker,  changes  his  personal  trick  or  habit 
— even  the  manner  in  which  he  clutches  his 
chin  or  caresses  his  nose  at  a  crisis — the 
matter  must  be  carefully  considered  in  this 
world  where  each  is  trustee  for  his  neigh- 


82  SEA  WARFARE 

bour's  life  and,  vastly  more  important,  the 
corporate  honour. 

"What  are  the  destroyers  doing  just 
now?"  I  asked. 

"Oh — running  about — much  the  same 
as  usual." 

The  Navy  hasn't  the  least  objection  to 
telling  one  everything  that  it  is  doing. 
Unfortunately,  it  speaks  its  own  language, 
which  is  incomprehensible  to  the  civil- 
ian. But  you  will  find  it  all  in  "The 
Channel  Pilot"  and  "The  Riddle  of  the 
Sands." 

It  is  a  foul  coast,  hairy  with  currents 
and  rips,  and  mottled  with  shoals  and  rocks. 
Practically  the  same  men  hold  on  here  in 
the  same  ships,  with  much  the  same  crews, 
for  months  and  months.  A  most  senior 
officer  told  me  that  they  were  "good  boys" 
— on  reflection,  "quite  good  boys" — but 
neither  he  nor  the  flags  on  his  chart  ex- 
plained how  they  managed  their  lightless, 
unmarked  navigations  through  black  night, 
blinding  rain,  and  the  crazy,  rebounding 
North  Sea  gales.  They  themselves  ascribe 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET  83 

it  to  Joss  that  they  have  not  piled  up  their 
ships  a  hundred  times. 

"I  expect  it  must  be  because  we're 
always  dodging  about  over  the  same  ground. 
One  gets  to  smell  it.  We've  bumped  pretty 
hard,  of  course,  but  we  haven't  expended 
much  up  to  date.  You  never  know  your 
luck  on  patrol,  though." 

THE  NATURE  OF  THE  BEAST 

Personally,  though  they  have  been  true 
friends  to  me,  I  loathe  destroyers,  and  all 
the  raw,  racking,  ricochetting  life  that  goes 
with  them — the  smell  of  the  wet  "lammies" 
and  damp  wardroom  cushions;  the  galley- 
chimney  smoking  out  the  bridge;  the 
obstacle-strewn  deck;  and  the  pervading 
beastliness  of  oil,  grit,  and  greasy  iron. 
Even  at  moorings  they  shiver  and  sidle 
like  half-backed  horses.  At  sea  they  will 
neither  rise  up  and  fly  clear  like  the  hydro- 
planes, nor  dive  and  be  done  with  it  like 
the  submarines,  but  imitate  the  vices  of 
both.  A  scientist  of  the  lower  deck  de- 


84  SEA  WARFARE 

scribes  them  as:  "Half  switchback,  half 
water-chute,  and  Hell  continuous."  Their 
only  merit,  from  a  landsman's  point  of 
view,  is  that  they  can  crumple  themselves 
up  from  stem  to  bridge  and  (I  have  seen 
it)  still  get  home.  But  one  does  not 
breathe  these  compliments  to  their  com- 
manders. Other  destroyers  may  be — they 
will  point  them  out  to  you — poisonous  bags 
of  tricks,  but  their  own  command — never! 
Is  she  high-bowed?  That  is  the  only  type 
which  over-rides  the  seas  instead  of  smother- 
ing. Is  she  low?  Low  bows  glide  through 
the  water  where  those  collier-nosed  brutes 
smash  it  open.  Is  she  mucked  up  with 
submarine-catchers?  They  rather  improve 
her  trim.  No  other  ship  has  them.  Have 
they  been  denied  to  her?  Thank  Heaven, 
we  go  to  sea  without  a  fish-curing  plant  on 
deck.  Does  she  roll,  even  for  her  class? 
She  is  drier  than  Dreadnoughts.  Is  she 
permanently  and  infernally  wet?  Stiff,  sir 
—stiff:  the  first  requisite  of  a  gun-plat- 
form. 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET   85 

"SERVICE  AS  REQUISITE'* 

Thus  the  Caesars  and  their  fortunes  put 
out  to  sea  with  their  subs  and  their  sad- 
eyed  engineers,  and  their  long-suffering 
signallers — I  do  not  even  know  the  technical 
name  of  the  sin  which  causes  a  man  to  be 
born  a  destroyer-signaller  in  this  life — and 
the  little  yellow  shells  stuck  all  about  where 
they  can  be  easiest  reached.  The  rest  of 
their  acts  is  written  for  the  information  of 
the  proper  authorities.  It  reads  like  a  page 
of  Todhunter.  But  the  masters  of  merchant- 
ships  could  tell  more  of  eyeless  shapes, 
barely  outlined  on  the  foam  of  their  own 
arrest,  who  shout  orders  through  the  thick 
gloom  alongside.  The  strayed  and  anxious 
neutral  knows  them  when  their  search- 
lights pin  him  across  the  deep,  or  their 
syrens  answer  the  last  yelp  of  his  as  steam 
goes  out  of  his  torpedoed  boilers.  They 
stand  by  to  catch  and  soothe  him  in  his 
pyjamas  at  the  gangway,  collect  his  scattered 
lifeboats,  and  see  a  warm  drink  into  him 
before  they  turn  to  hunt  the  slayer.  The 


86  SEA  WARFARE 

drifters,  punching  and  reeling  up  and  down 
their  ten-mile  line  of  traps;  the  outer 
trawlers,  drawing  the  very  teeth  of  Death 
with  water-sodden  fingers,  are  grateful  for 
their  low,  guarded  signals;  and  when  the 
Zeppelin's  revealing  star-shell  cracks  dark- 
ness open  above  him,  the  answering  crack 
of  the  invisible  destroyers'  guns  comforts 
the  busy  mine-layers.  Big  cruisers  talk  to 
them,  too;  and,  what  is  more,  they  talk  back 
to  the  cruisers.  Sometimes  they  draw  fire 
— pinkish  spurts  of  light — a  long  way  off, 
where  Fritz  is  trying  to  coax  them  over  a 
mine-field  he  has  just  laid;  or  they  steal 
on  Fritz  in  the  midst  of  his  job,  and  the 
horizon  rings  with  barking,  which  the  inevit- 
able neutral  who  saw  it  all  reports  as  "a 
heavy  fleet  action  in  the  North  Sea."  The 
sea  after  dark  can  be  as  alive  as  the  woods  of 
summer  nights.  Everything  is  exactly  where 
you  don't  expect  it,  and  the  shyest  creatures 
are  the  farthest  away  from  their  holes. 
Things  boom  overhead  like  bitterns,  or 
scutter  alongside  like  hares,  or  arise  dripping 
and  hissing  from  below  like  otters.  It  is 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET   87 

the  destroyer's  business  to  find  out  what 
their  business  may  be  through  all  the  long 
night,  and  to  help  or  hinder  accordingly. 
Dawn  sees  them  pitch-poling  insanely  be- 
tween head-seas,  or  hanging  on  to  bridges 
that  sweep  like  scythes  from  one  forlorn 
horizon  to  the  other.  A  homeward-bound 
submarine  chooses  this  hour  to  rise,  very 
ostentatiously,  and  signals  by  hand  to  a 
lieutenant  in  command.  (They  were  the 
same  term  at  Dartmouth,  and  same  first 
ship.) 

"What's  he  sayin'?  Secure  that  gun, 
will  you?  'Can't  hear  oneself  speak."  The 
gun  is  a  bit  noisy  on  its  mountings,  but  that 
isn't  the  reason  for  the  destroyer-lieuten- 
ant's short  temper. 

"Says  he's  goin'  down,  sir,"  the  signaller 
replies.  What  the  submarine  had  spelt  out, 
and  everybody  knows  it,  was:  "Cannot 
approve  of  this  extremely  frightful  weather. 
Am  going  to  bye-bye." 

"Well!"  snaps  the  lieutenant  to  his 
signaller,  "what  are  you  grinning  at?" 
The  submarine  has  hung  on  to  ask  if  the 


88  SEA  WARFARE 

destroyer  will  "kiss  her  and  whisper  good- 
night." A  breaking  sea  smacks  her  tower 
in  the  middle  of  the  insult.  She  closes  like 
an  oyster,  but — just  too  late.  Habet ! 
There  must  be  a  quarter  of  a  ton  of  water 
somewhere  down  below,  on  its  way  to  her 
ticklish  batteries. 

"What  a  wag!"  says  the  signaller, 
dreamily.  "Well,  'e  can't  say  'e  didn't  get 
'is  little  kiss." 

The  lieutenant  in  command  smiles.  The 
sea  is  a  beast,  but  a  just  beast. 

RACIAL  UNTRUTHS 

This  is  trivial  enough,  but  what  would 
you  have?  If  admirals  will  not  strike  the 
proper  attitudes,  nor  lieutenants  emit  the 
appropriate  sentiments,  one  is  forced  back 
on  the  truth,  which  is  that  the  men  at  the 
heart  of  the  great  matters  in  our  Empire 
are,  mostly,  of  an  even  simplicity.  From 
the  advertising  point  of  view  they  are 
stupid,  but  the  breed  has  always  been 
stupid  in  this  department.  It  may  be  due, 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET  89 

as  our  enemies  assert,  to  our  racial  snobbery, 
or,  as  others  hold,  to  a  certain  God-given 
lack  of  imagination  which  saves  us  from 
being  over-concerned  at  the  effects  of  our 
appearances  on  others.  Either  way,  it 
deceives  the  enemies'  people  more  than 
any  calculated  lie.  When  you  come  to 
think  of  it,  though  the  English  are  the 
worst  paper-work  and  viva  voce  liars  in 
the  world,  they  have  been  rigorously  trained 
since  their  early  youth  to  live  and  act  lies 
for  the  comfort  of  the  society  in  which  they 
move,  and  so  for  their  own  comfort.  The 
result  in  this  war  is  interesting. 

It  is  no  lie  that  at  the  present  moment 
we  hold  all  the  seas  in  the  hollow  of  our 
hands.  For  that  reason  we  shuffle  over 
them  shame-faced  and  apologetic,  making 
arrangements  here  and  flagrant  compromises 
there,  in  order  to  give  substance  to  the  lie 
that  we  have  dropped  fortuitously  into  this 
high  seat  and  are  looking  round  the  world 
for  some  one  to  resign  it  to.  Nor  is  it 
any  lie  that,  had  we  used  the  Navy's  bare 
fist  instead  of  its  gloved  hand  from  the 


90  SEA  WARFARE 

beginning,  we  could  in  all  likelihood  have 
shortened  the  war.  That  being  so,  we 
elected  to  dab  and  peck  at  and  half -strangle 
the  enemy,  to  let  him  go  and  choke  him 
again.  It  is  no  lie  that  we  continue  on 
our  inexplicable  path  animated,  we  will  try 
to  believe  till  other  proof  is  given,  by  a 
cloudy  idea  of  alleviating  or  mitigating 
something  for  somebody — not  ourselves. 
[Here,  of  course,  is  where  our  racial  snob- 
bery comes  in,  which  makes  the  German 
gibber.  I  cannot  understand  why  he  has 
not  accused  us  to  our  Allies  of  having 
secret  commercial  understandings  with  him.] 
For  that  reason,  we  shall  finish  the  German 
eagle  as  the  merciful  lady  killed  the  chicken. 
It  took  her  the  whole  afternoon,  and  then, 
you  will  remember,  the  carcase  had  to  be 
thrown  away. 

Meantime,  there  is  a  large  and  unlovely 
water,  inhabited  by  plain  men  in  severe 
boats,  who  endure  cold,  exposure,  wet,  and 
monotony  almost  as  heavy  as  their  responsi- 
bilities. Charge  them  with  heroism — but 
that  needs  heroism,  indeed!  Accuse  them 


THE  FRINGES  OF  THE  FLEET  91 

of  patriotism,  they  become  ribald.  Examine 
into  the  records  of  the  miraculous  work 
they  have  done  and  are  doing.  They  will 
assist  you,  but  with  perfect  sincerity  they 
will  make  as  light  of  the  valour  and  fore- 
thought shown  as  of  the  ends  they  have 
gained  for  mankind.  The  Service  takes  all 
work  for  granted.  It  knew  long  ago  that 
certain  things  would  have  to  be  done,  and 
it  did  its  best  to  be  ready  for  them.  When  it 
disappeared  over  the  sky-line  for  manoeuvres 
it  was  practising — always  practising;  trying 
its  men  and  stuff  and  throwing  out  what 
could  not  take  the  strain.  That  is  why, 
when  war  came,  only  a  few  names  had  to 
be  changed,  and  those  chiefly  for  the  sake 
of  the  body,  not  of  the  spirit.  And  the 
Seniors  who  hold  the  key  to  our  plans  and 
know  what  will  be  done  if  things  happen, 
and  what  lines  wear  thin  in  the  many  chains, 
they  are  of  one  fibre  and  speech  with  the 
Juniors  and  the  lower  deck  and  all  the  rest 
who  come  out  of  the  undemonstrative 
households  ashore.  "Here  is  the  situation 
as  it  exists  now,"  say  the  Seniors.  "This 


92  SEA  WARFARE 

is  what  we  do  to  meet  it.  Look  and  count 
and  measure  and  judge  for  yourself,  and 
then  you  will  know." 

It  is  a  safe  offer.  The  civilian  only  sees 
that  the  sea  is  a  vast  place,  divided  between 
wisdom  and  chance.  He  only  knows  that 
the  uttermost  oceans  have  been  swept  clear, 
and  the  trade-routes  purged,  one  by  one, 
even  as  our  armies  were  being  convoyed 
along  them;  that  there  was  no  island  nor  key 
left  unsearched  on  any  waters  that  might 
hide  an  enemy's  craft  between  the  Arctic 
Circle  and  the  Horn.  He  only  knows  that 
less  than  a  day's  run  to  the  eastward  of 
where  he  stands,  the  enemy's  fleets  have 
been  held  for  a  year  and  four  months,  in 
order  that  civilisation  may  go  about  its 
business  on  all  our  waters. 


TALES  OF  "THE  TRADE 

(1916) 


"THE  TRADE" 

THEY  bear,  in  place  of  classic  names, 

Letters  and  numbers  on  their  skin. 
They  plan  their  grisly  blindfold  games 

In  little  boxes  made  of  tin. 

Sometimes  they  stalk  ilie  Zeppelin, 
Sometimes  they  learn  where  mines  are  laid, 

Or  where  the  Baltic  ice  is  thin. 
That  is  the  custom  of  "  The  Trade" 

Few  prize-courts  sit  upon  their  claims. 

They  seldom  tow  their  targets  in. 
They  follow  certain  secret  aims 

Down  under,  far  from  strife  or  din. 

When  they  are  ready  to  begin 
No  flag  is  flown,  no  fuss  is  made 

More  than  the  shearing  of  a  pin. 
That  is  the  custom  of  "  The  Trade." 

95 


96  SEA  WARFARE 

The  Scout's  quadruple  funnel  flame* 

A  mark  from  Sweden  to  the  Swin, 
The  Cruiser's  thunderous  screw  proclaims 

Her  comings  out  and  goings  in: 

But  only  whiffs  of  paraffin 
Or  creamy  rings  that  fizz  and  fade 

Show  where  the  one-eyed  Death  has  been. 
That  is  the  custom  of  "  The  Trade" 

Their  feats,  their  fortunes  and  their  fames 
Are  hidden  from  their  nearest  kin; 

No  eager  public  backs  or  blames, 

No  journal  prints  the  yarns  they  spin 
(The  Censor  would  not  let  it  in  /) 

When  they  return  from  run  or  raid. 
Unheard  they  work,  unseen  they  win. 

That  is  the  custom  of  "  The  Trade." 


SOME  WORK  IN  THE  BALTIC 

No  ONE  knows  how  the  title  of  "The 
Trade"  came  to  be  applied  to  the  Sub- 
marine Service.  Some  say  that  the  cruisers 
invented  it  because  they  pretend  that  sub- 
marine officers  look  like  unwashed  chauf- 
feurs. Others  think  it  sprang  forth  by  itself, 
which  means  that  it  was  coined  by  the  Lower 
Deck,  where  they  always  have  the  proper 
names  for  things.  Whatever  the  truth,  the 
Submarine  Service  is  now  "the  trade";  and 
if  you  ask  them  why,  they  will  answer :  "What 
else  could  you  call  it  ?  The  Trade's  'the  trade,' 
of  course." 

It  is  a  close  corporation;  yet  it  recruits 
its  men  and  officers  from  every  class  that 
uses  the  sea  and  engines,  as  well  as  from 

97 


98  SEA  WARFARE 

many  classes  that  never  expected  to  deal 
with  either.  It  takes  them;  they  disappear 
for  a  while  and  return  changed  to  their  very 
souls,  for  the  Trade  lives  in  a  world  without 
precedents,  of  which  no  generation  has  had 
any  previous  experience — a  world  still  being 
made  and  enlarged  daily.  It  creates  and 
settles  its  own  problems  as  it  goes  along, 
and  if  it  cannot  help  itself  no  one  else  can. 
So  the  Trade  lives  in  the  dark  and  thinks 
out  inconceivable  and  impossible  things 
which  it  afterwards  puts  into  practice. 

It  keeps  books,  too,  as  honest  traders 
should.  They  are  almost  as  bald  as  ledgers, 
and  are  written  up,  hour  by  hour,  on  a  little 
sliding  table  that  pulls  out  from  beneath 
the  commanders'  bunk.  In  due  time  they 
go  to  my  Lords  of  the  Admiralty,  who 
presently  circulate  a  few  carefully  watered 
extracts  for  the  confidential  information  of 
the  junior  officers  of  the  Trade,  that  these 
may  see  what  things  are  done  and  how. 
The  Juniors  read  but  laugh.  They  have 
heard  the  stories,  with  all  the  flaming  detail 
and  much  of  the  language,  either  from  a 


TALES  OF  "THE  TRADE"       99 

chief  actor  while  they  perched  deferentially 
on  the  edge  of  a  mess-room  fender,  or  from 
his  subordinate,  in  which  case  they  were 
not  so  deferential,  or  from  some  returned 
member  of  the  crew  present  on  the  occasion, 
who,  between  half-shut  teeth  at  the  wheel, 
jerks  out  what  really  happened.  There  is 
very  little  going  on  in  the  Trade  that  the 
Trade  does  not  know  within  a  reasonable 
time.  But  the  outside  world  must  wait 
until  my  Lords  of  the  Admiralty  release 
the  records.  Some  of  them  have  been 
released  now. 

SUBMARINE  AND  ICE-BREAKER 

Let  us  take,  almost  at  random,  an  episode 
in  the  life  of  H.M.  Submarine  E  9.  It  is 
true  that  she  was  commanded  by  Com- 
mander Max  Horton,  but  the  utter  im- 
personality of  the  tale  makes  it  as  though 
the  boat  herself  spoke.  (Also,  never  hav- 
ing met  or  seen  any  of  the  gentlemen 
concerned  in  the  matter,  the  writer  can 
be  impersonal  too.)  Some  time  ago,  E  9 


100  SEA  WARFARE 

was  in  the  Baltic,  in  the  deeps  of  winter, 
where  she  used  to  be  taken  to  her  hunting 
grounds  by  an  ice-breaker.  Obviously  a 
submarine  cannot  use  her  sensitive  nose  to 
smash  heavy  ice  with,  so  the  broad-beamed 
pushing  chaperone  comes  along  to  see  her 
clear  of  the  thick  harbour  and  shore  ice. 
In  the  open  sea  apparently  she  is  left 
to  her  own  devices.  In  company  of  the 
ice-breaker,  then,  E  9  "proceeded"  (neither 
in  the  Senior  nor  the  Junior  Service  does 
any  one  officially  "go"  anywhere)  to  a 
"certain  position." 

Here — it  is  not  stated  in  the  book,  but 
the  Trade  knows  every  aching,  single  detail 
of  what  is  left  out — she  spent  a  certain 
time  in  testing  arrangements  and  apparatus, 
which  may  or  may  not  work  properly  when 
immersed  in  a  mixture  of  block-ice  and  dirty 
ice-cream  in  a  temperature  well  towards 
zero.  This  is  a  pleasant  job,  made  the 
more  delightful  by  the  knowledge  that  if 
you  slip  off  the  superstructure  the  deadly 
Baltic  chill  will  stop  your  heart  long  before 
even  your  heavy  clothes  can  drown  you. 


TALES  OF  "  THE  TRADE  "       101 

Hence  (and  this  is  not  in  the  book  either) 
the  remark  of  the  highly  trained  sailor-man 
in  these  latitudes  who,  on  being  told  by 
his  superior  officer  in  the  execution  of  his 
duty  to  go  to  Hell,  did  insubordinately  and 
enviously  reply:  "D'you  think  I'd  be  here 
if  I  could?"  Whereby  he  caused  the  entire 
personnel,  beginning  with  the  commander, 
to  say  "Amen,"  or  words  to  that  effect. 
E  9  evidently  made  things  work. 

Next  day  she  reports:  "As  circum- 
stances were  favourable  decided  to  attempt 
to  bag  a  destroyer . ' '  Her  * '  certain  position ' ' 
must  have  been  near  a  well-used  destroyer- 
run,  for  shortly  afterwards  she  sees  three  of 
them,  but  too  far  off  to  attack,  and  later,  as 
the  light  is  failing,  a  fourth  destroyer  towards 
which  she  manoauvres.  "Depth-keeping," 
she  notes,  "very  difficult  owing  to  heavy 
swell."  An  observation  balloon  on  a  gusty 
day  is  almost  as  stable  as  a  submarine 
"pumping"  in  a  heavy  swell,  and  since 
the  Baltic  is  shallow,  the  submarine  runs 
the  chance  of  being  let  down  with  a  whack 
on  the  bottom.  None  the  less,  E  9  works 


102  SEA  WARFARE 

her  way  to  within  600  yards  of  the  quarry; 
fires  and  waits  just  long  enough  to  be  sure 
that  her  torpedo  is  running  straight,  and 
that  the  destroyer  is  holding  her  course. 
Then  she  "dips  to  avoid  detection."  The 
rest  is  deadly  simple:  "At  the  correct 
moment  after  firing,  45  to  50  seconds,  heard 
the  unmistakable  noise  of  torpedo  detonat- 
ing." Four  minutes  later  she  rose  and 
"found  destroyer  had  disappeared."  Then, 
for  reasons  probably  connected  with  other 
destroyers,  who,  too,  may  have  heard  that 
unmistakable  sound,  she  goes  to  bed  below 
in  the  chill  dark  till  it  is  time  to  turn  home- 
wards. When  she  rose  she  met  storm  from 
the  north  and  logged  it  accordingly.  "  Spray 
froze  as  it  struck,  and  bridge  became  a  mass 
of  ice.  Experienced  considerable  difficulty 
in  keeping  the  conning-tower  hatch  free 
from  ice.  Found  it  necessary  to  keep  a 
man  continuously  employed  on  this  work. 
Bridge  screen  immovable,  ice  six  inches 
thick  on  it.  Telegraphs  frozen."  In  this 
state  she  forges  ahead  till  midnight,  and 
any  one  who  pleases  can  imagine  the 


TALES  OF  "THE  TRADE"       103 

thoughts  of  the  continuous  employee  scrap- 
ing and  hammering  round  the  hatch,  as 
well  as  the  delight  of  his  friends  below 
when  the  ice-slush  spattered  down  the 
conning-tower.  At  last  she  considered  it 
"advisable  to  free  the  boat  of  ice,  so  went 
below." 

"As  REQUISITE" 

In  the  Senior  Service  the  two  words 
"as  requisite"  cover  everything  that  need 
not  be  talked  about.  E  9  next  day  "pro- 
ceeded as  requisite"  through  a  series  of 
snowstorms  and  recurring  deposits  of  ice 
on  the  bridge  till  she  got  in  touch  with  her 
friend  the  ice-breaker;  and  in  her  company 
ploughed  and  rooted  her  way  back  to  the 
work  we  know.  There  is  nothing  to  show 
that  it  was  a  near  thing  for  E  9,  but  some- 
how one  has  the  idea  that  the  ice-breaker 
did  not  arrive  any  too  soon  for  E  9's  comfort 
and  progress.  (But  what  happens  in  the 
Baltic  when  the  ice-breaker  does  not  arrive?) 

That  was  in  winter.  In  summer  quite 
the  other  way,  E  9  had  to  go  to  bed  by 


104  SEA  WARFARE 

day  very  often  under  the  long-lasting 
northern  light  when  the  Baltic  is  as  smooth 
as  a  carpet,  and  one  cannot  get  within  a 
mile  and  a  half  of  anything  with  eyes  in  its 
head  without  being  put  down.  There  was 
one  time  when  E  9,  evidently  on  information 
received,  took  up  "a  certain  position"  and 
reported  the  sea  "glassy."  She  had  to 
suffer  in  silence,  while  three  heavily  laden 
German  ships  went  by;  for  an  attack  would 
have  given  away  her  position.  Her  reward 
came  next  day,  when  she  sighted  (the  words 
run  like  Marryat's)  "enemy  squadron  com- 
ing up  fast  from  eastward,  proceeding 
inshore  of  us."  They  were  two  heavy 
battleships  with  an  escort  of  destroyers,  and 
E  9  turned  to  attack.  She  does  not  say 
how  she  crept  up  in  that  smooth  sea  within 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  of  the  leading  ship,  "a 
three-funnel  ship,  of  either  the  Deutschland 
or  Braunschweig  class,"  but  she  managed 
it,  and  fired  both  bow  torpedoes  at  her. 

"No.  1  torpedo  was  seen  and  heard  to 
strike  her  just  before  foremost  funnel: 
smoke  and  debris  appeared  to  go  as  high 


TALES  OF  "THE  TRADE"      105 

as  masthead."  That  much  E  9  saw  before 
one  of  the  guardian  destroyers  ran  at  her. 
"So,"  says  she,  "observing  her  I  took  my 
periscope  off  the  battleship."  This  was 
excusable,  as  the  destroyer  was  coming  up 
with  intent  to  kill  and  E  9  had  to  flood 
her  tanks  and  get  down  quickly.  Even  so, 
the  destroyer  only  just  missed  her,  and  she 
struck  bottom  in  43  feet.  "But,"  says  E  9, 
who,  if  she  could  not  see,  kept  her  ears 
open,  "at  the  correct  interval  (the  45  or  50 
seconds  mentioned  in  the  previous  case)  the 
second  torpedo  was  heard  to  explode, 
though  not  actually  seen."  E  9  came  up 
twenty  minutes  later  to  make  sure.  The 
destroyer  was  waiting  for  her  a  couple  of 
hundred  yards  away,  and  again  E  9  dipped 
for  the  Me,  but  "just  had  time  to  see  one 
large  vessel  approximately  four  or  five  miles 
away." 

Putting  courage  aside,  think  for  a  mo- 
ment of  the  mere  drill  of  it  all — that  last 
dive  for  that  attack  on  the  chosen  battle- 
ship; the  eye  at  the  periscope  watching 
"No.  1  torpedo"  get  home;  the  rush  of  the 


106  SEA  WARFARE 

vengeful  destroyer;  the  instant  orders  for 
flooding  everything;  the  swift  descent  which 
had  to  be  arranged  for  with  full  knowl- 
edge of  the  shallow  sea-floors  waiting  below, 
and  a  guess  at  the  course  that  might  be 
taken  by  the  seeking  bows  above,  for  as- 
suming a  destroyer  to  draw  10  feet  and  a 
submarine  on  the  bottom  to  stand  25  feet 
to  the  top  of  her  conning-tower,  there  is 
not  much  clearance  in  43  feet  salt  water, 
specially  if  the  boat  jumps  when  she  touches 
bottom.  And  through  all  these  and  half  a 
hundred  other  simultaneous  considerations, 
imagine  the  trained  minds  below,  counting, 
as  only  torpedo-men  can  count,  the  run  of 
the  merciless  seconds  that  should  tell  when 
that  second  shot  arrived.  Then  "at  the 
correct  interval"  as  laid  down  in  the  table 
of  distances,  the  boom  and  the  jar  of  No.  2 
torpedo,  the  relief,  the  exhaled  breath  and 
untightened  lips;  the  impatient  waiting  for 
a  second  peep,  and  when  that  had  been 
taken  and  the  eye  at  the  periscope  had  re- 
ported one  little  nigger-boy  in  place  of  two 
on  the  waters,  perhaps  cigarettes,  etc.,  while 


TALES  OF  "THE  TRADE"      107 

the  destroyer  sickled  about  at  a   venture 
overhead. 

Certainly  they  give  men  rewards  for 
doing  such  things,  but  what  reward  can 
there  be  in  any  gift  of  Kings  or  peoples  to 
match  the  enduring  satisfaction  of  having 
done  them,  not  alone,  but  with  and  through 
and  by  trusty  and  proven  companions? 

DEFEATED  BY  DARKNESS 

E  1,  also  a  Baltic  boat,  her  commander 
F.  N.  Laurence,  had  her  experiences  too. 
She  went  out  one  summer  day  and  late — 
too  late — in  the  evening  sighted  three 
transports.  The  first  she  hit.  While  she 
was  arranging  for  the  second,  the  third 
inconsiderately  tried  to  ram  her  before  her 
sights  were  on.  So  it  was  necessary  to  go 
down  at  once  and  waste  whole  minutes  of 
the  precious  scanting  light.  When  she 
rose,  the  stricken  ship  was  sinking  and 
shortly  afterwards  blew  up.  The  other  two 
were  patrolling  near  by.  It  would  have 
been  a  fair  chance  in  daylight,  but  the 


108  SEA  WARFARE 

darkness  defeated  her  and  she  had  to  give 
up  the  attack. 

It  was  E  1  who  during  thick  weather 
came  across  a  squadron  of  battle-cruisers 
and  got  in  on  a  flanking  ship — probably  the 
Molike.  The  destroyers  were  very  much 
on  the  alert,  and  she  had  to  dive  at  once  to 
avoid  one  who  only  missed  her  by  a  few  feet. 
Then  the  fog  shut  down  and  stopped  further 
developments.  Thus  do  time  and  chance 
come  to  every  man. 

The  Trade  has  many  stories,  too,  of 
watching  patrols  when  a  boat  must  see 
chance  after  chance  go  by  under  her  nose 
and  write — merely  write — what  she  has 
seen.  Naturally  they  do  not  appear  in  any 
accessible  records.  Nor,  which  is  a  pity, 
do  the  authorities  release  the  records  of 
glorious  failures,  when  everything  goes 
wrong;  when  torpedoes  break  surface  and 
squatter  like  ducks;  or  arrive  full  square 
with  a  clang  and  burst  of  white  water  and— 
fail  to  explode;  when  the  devil  is  in  charge 
of  all  the  motors,  and  clutches  develop  play 
that  would  scare  a  shore-going  mechanic 


TALES  OF  "THE  TRADE"      109 

bald;  when  batteries  begin  to  give  off  death 
instead  of  power,  and  atop  of  all,  ice  or 
wreckage  of  the  strewn  seas  racks  and 
wrenches  the  hull  till  the  whole  leaking  bag 
of  tricks  limps  home  on  six  missing  cylinders 
and  one  ditto  propeller,  plus  the  indomitable 
will  of  the  red-eyed  husky  scarecrows  in 
charge. 

There  might  be  worse  things  in  this 
world  for  decent  people  to  read  than  such 
records. 


n 

BUSINESS  IN  THE  SEA  OF 
MARMORA 

THIS  war  is  like  an  iceberg.  We,  the 
public,  only  see  an  eighth  of  it  above  water. 
The  rest  is  out  of  sight  and,  as  with  the 
berg,  one  guesses  its  extent  by  great  blocks 
that  break  off  and  shoot  up  to  the  surface 
from  some  underlying  out-running  spur  a 
quarter  of  a  mile  away.  So  with  this  war 
sudden  tales  come  to  light  which  reveal  un- 
suspected activities  in  unexpected  quarters. 
One  takes  it  for  granted  such  things  are 
always  going  on  somewhere,  but  the  actual 
emergence  of  the  record  is  always  astonish- 
ing. 

Once  upon  a  time,  there  were  certain  E 
type  boats  who  worked  the  Sea  of  Marmora 

111 


112  SEA  WARFARE 

with  thoroughness  and  humanity;  for  the 
two,  in  English  hands,  are  compatible. 
The  road  to  their  hunting-grounds  was 
strewn  with  peril,  the  waters  they  inhabited 
were  full  of  eyes  that  gave  them  no  rest, 
and  what  they  lost  or  expended  in  wear  and 
tear  of  the  chase  could  not  be  made  good 
till  they  had  run  the  gauntlet  to  their  base 
again.  The  full  tale  of  their  improvisations 
and  "makee-does"  will  probably  never  come 
to  light,  though  fragments  can  be  picked 
up  at  intervals  in  the  proper  places  as 
the  men  concerned  come  and  go.  The 
Admiralty  gives  only  the  bones,  but  those 
are  not  so  dry,  of  the  boat's  official  story. 

When  E  14,  Commander  E.  Courtney- 
Boyle,  went  to  her  work  in  the  Sea  of 
Marmora,  she,  like  her  sister,  "proceeded" 
on  her  gas-engine  up  the  Dardanelles;  and  a 
gas-engine  by  night  between  steep  cliffs  has 
been  described  by  the  Lower-deck  as  a 
"full  brass  band  in  a  railway  cutting."  So 
a  fort  picked  her  up  with  a  searchlight  and 
missed  her  with  artillery.  She  dived  under 
the  minefield  that  guarded  the  Straits,  and 


TALES  OF  "THE  TRADE"      113 

when  she  rose  at  dawn  in  the  narrowest 
part  of  the  channel,  which  is  about  one  mile 
and  a  half  across,  all  the  forts  fired  at  her. 
The  water,  too,  was  thick  with  steamboat 
patrols,  out  of  which  E  14  selected  a 
Turkish  gunboat  and  gave  her  a  torpedo. 
She  had  just  time  to  see  the  great  column 
of  water  shoot  as  high  as  the  gunboat's 
mast  when  she  had  to  dip  again  as  "the 
men  in  a  small  steamboat  were  leaning 
over  trying  to  catch  hold  of  the  top  of  my 
periscope." 

"Six  HOURS  OF  BLIND  DEATH" 

This  sentence,  which  might  have  come 
out  of  a  French  exercise  book,  is  all 
Lieutenant-Commander  Courtney-Boyle 
sees  fit  to  tell,  and  that  officer  will  never 
understand  why  one  taxpayer  at  least 
demands  his  arrest  after  the  war  till  he  shall 
have  given  the  full  tale.  Did  he  sight  the 
shadowy  underline  of  the  small  steamboat 
green  through  the  deadlights?  Or  did  she 
suddenly  swim  into  his  vision  from  behind, 


114  SEA  WARFARE 

and  obscure,  without  warning,  his  periscope 
with  a  single  brown  clutching  hand?  Was 
she  alone,  or  one  of  a  mob  of  splashing, 
shouting  small  craft?  He  may  well  have 
been  too  busy  to  note,  for  there  were 
patrols  all  around  him,  a  minefield  of 
curious  design  and  undefined  area  some- 
where in  front,  and  steam  trawlers  vigorously 
sweeping  for  him  astern  and  ahead.  And 
when  E  14  had  burrowed  and  bumped  and 
scraped  through  six  hours  of  blind  death, 
she  found  the  Sea  of  Marmora  crawling 
with  craft,  and  was  kept  down  almost  con- 
tinuously and  grew  hot  and  stuffy  in 
consequence.  Nor  could  she  charge  her 
batteries  in  peace,  so  at  the  end  of  another 
hectic,  hunted  day  of  starting  them  up  and 
breaking  off  and  diving — which  is  bad  for 
the  temper — she  decided  to  quit  those 
infested  waters  near  the  coast  and  charge 
up  somewhere  off  the  traffic  routes. 

This  accomplished,  after  a  long,  hot  run, 
which  did  the  motors  no  good,  she  went 
back  to  her  beat,  where  she  picked  up  three 
destroyers  convoying  a  couple  of  troopships. 


TALES  OF  "THE  TRADE"      115 

But  it  was  a  glassy  calm  and  the  destroyers 
"came  for  me."  She  got  off  a  long-range 
torpedo  at  one  transport,  and  ducked  before 
she  could  judge  results.  She  apologises  for 
this  on  the  grounds  that  one  of  her  peri- 
scopes had  been  damaged — not,  as  one 
would  expect,  by  the  gentleman  leaning 
out  of  the  little  steamboat,  but  by  some 
casual  shot — calibre  not  specified — the  day 
before.  "And  so,"  says  E  14,  "I  could 
not  risk  my  remaining  one  being  bent." 
However,  she  heard  a  thud,  and  the  depth- 
gauges — those  great  clock-hands  on  the 
white-faced  circles — "flicked,"  which  is 
another  sign  of  dreadful  certainty  down 
under.  When  she  rose  again  she  saw  a 
destroyer  convoying  one  burning  transport 
to  the  nearest  beach.  That  afternoon  she 
met  a  sister-boat  (now  gone  to  Valhalla), 
who  told  her  that  she  was  almost  out  of 
torpedoes,  and  they  arranged  a  rendezvous 
for  next  day,  but  "before  we  could  com- 
municate we  had  to  dive,  and  I  did  not  see 
her  again."  There  must  be  many  such 
meetings  in  the  Trade,  under  all  skies — 


116  SEA  WARFARE 

boat  rising  beside  boat  at  the  point  agreed 
upon  for  interchange  of  news  and  materials ; 
the  talk  shouted  aloud  with  the  speakers' 
eyes  always  on  the  horizon  and  all  hands 
standing  by  to  dive,  even  in  the  middle  of  a 
sentence. 

ANNOYING  PATROL  SHIPS 

E  14  kept  to  her  job,  on  the  edge  of 
the  procession  of  traffic.  Patrol  vessels 
annoyed  her  to  such  an  extent  that  "as  I 
had  not  seen  any  transports  lately  I  decided 
to  sink  a  patrol-ship  as  they  were  always 
firing  on  me."  So  she  torpedoed  a  thing 
that  looked  like  a  mine-layer,  and  must 
have  been  something  of  that  kidney,  for  it 
sank  in  less  than  a  minute.  A  tramp- 
steamer  lumbering  across  the  dead  flat  sea 
was  thoughtfully  headed  back  to  Con- 
stantinople by  firing  rifles  ahead  of  her. 
"Under  fire  the  whole  day,"  E  14  observes 
philosophically.  The  nature  of  her  work 
made  this  inevitable.  She  was  all  among 
the  patrols,  which  kept  her  down  a  good 
deal  and  made  her  draw  on  her  batteries, 


TALES  OF  "THE  TRADE"      117 

and  when  she  rose  to  charge,  watchers 
ashore  burned  oil-flares  on  the  beach  or 
made  smokes  among  the  hills  according  to 
the  light.  In  either  case  there  would  be 
a  general  rush  of  patrolling  craft  of  all 
kinds,  from  steam  launches  to  gunboats. 
Nobody  loves  the  Trade,  though  E  14  did 
several  things  which  made  her  popular. 
She  let  off  a  string  of  very  surprised  dhows 
(they  were  empty)  in  charge  of  a  tug  which 
promptly  fled  back  to  Constantinople; 
stopped  a  couple  of  steamers  full  of  ref- 
ugees, also  bound  for  Constantinople,  who 
were  "very  pleased  at  being  allowed  to 
proceed"  instead  of  being  lusitaniaed  as 
they  had  expected.  Another  refugee-boat, 
fleeing  from  goodness  knows  what  horror, 
she  chased  into  Rodosto  Harbour,  where, 
though  she  could  not  see  any  troops,  "they 
opened  a  heavy  rifle  fire  on  us,  hitting  the 
boat  several  times.  So  I  went  away  and 
chased  two  more  small  tramps  who  returned 
towards  Constantinople." 

Transports,   of  course,   were  fair  game, 
and  in  spite  of  the  necessity  she  was  under 


118  SEA  WARFARE 

of  not  risking  her  remaining  eye,  E  14  got 
a  big  one  in  a  night  of  wind  and  made 
another  hurriedly  beach  itself,  which  then 
opened  fire  on  her,  assisted  by  the  local 
population.  "Returned  fire  and  proceeded," 
says  E  14.  The  diversion  of  returning  fire 
is  one  much  appreciated  by  the  lower-deck 
as  furnishing  a  pleasant  break  in  what 
otherwise  might  be  a  monotonous  and 
odoriferous  task.  There  is  no  drill  laid 
down  for  this  evolution,  but  etiquette  and 
custom  prescribe  that  on  going  up  the  hatch 
you  shall  not  too  energetically  prod  the 
next  man  ahead  with  the  muzzle  of  your 
rifle.  Likewise,  when  descending  in  quick 
time  before  the  hatch  closes,  you  are  re- 
quested not  to  jump  directly  on  the  head 
of  the  next  below.  Otherwise  you  act  "as 
requisite"  on  your  own  initiative. 

When  she  had  used  up  all  her  torpedoes 
E  14  prepared  to  go  home  by  the  way  she 
had  come — there  was  no  other — and  was 
chased  towards  Gallipoli  by  a  mixed  pack 
composed  of  a  gunboat,  a  torpedo-boat,  and 
a  tug.  "They  shepherded  me  to  Gallipoli, 


TALES  OF  "THE  TRADE"      119 

one  each  side  of  me  and  one  astern,  evi- 
dently expecting  me  to  be  caught  by  the 
nets  there."  She  walked  very  delicately  for 
the  next  eight  hours  or  so,  all  down  the 
Straits,  underrunning  the  strong  tides, 
ducking  down  when  the  fire  from  the  forts 
got  too  hot,  verifying  her  position  and  the 
position  of  the  minefield,  but  always  taking 
notes  of  every  ship  in  sight,  till  towards 
teatime  she  saw  our  Navy  off  the  entrance 
and  "rose  to  the  surface  abeam  of  a  French 
battleship  who  gave  us  a  rousing  cheer." 
She  had  been  away,  as  nearly  as  possible, 
three  weeks,  and  a  kind  destroyer  escorted 
her  to  the  base,  where  we  will  leave  her 
for  the  moment  while  we  consider  the  per- 
formance of  E  11  (Lieutenant-Commander 
M.  E.  Nasmith)  in  the  same  waters  at 
about  the  same  season. 

E  11  "proceeded"  in  the  usual  way,  to 
the  usual  accompaniments  of  hostile  de- 
stroyers, up  the  Straits,  and  meets  the 
usual  difficulties  about  charging-up  when 
she  gets  through.  Her  wireless  naturally 
takes  this  opportunity  to  give  trouble,  and 


120  SEA  WARFARE 

E  11  is  left,  deaf  and  dumb,  somewhere  in 
the  middle  of  the  Sea  of  Marmora,  diving 
to  avoid  hostile  destroyers  in  the  intervals 
of  trying  to  come  at  the  fault  in  her  aerial. 
(Yet  it  is  noteworthy  that  the  language  of 
the  Trade,  though  technical,  is  no  more 
emphatic  or  incandescent  than  that  of 
top-side  ships.) 

Then  she  goes  towards  Constantinople, 
finds  a  Turkish  torpedo-gunboat  off  the 
port,  sinks  her,  has  her  periscope  smashed 
by  a  six-pounder,  retires,  fits  a  new  top  on 
the  periscope,  and  at  10.30  A.  M. — they  must 
have  needed  it — pipes  "All  hands  to  bathe." 
Much  refreshed,  she  gets  her  wireless  linked 
up  at  last,  and  is  able  to  tell  the  authorities 
where  she  is  and  what  she  is  after. 


MR.  SILAS  Q.  SWING 

At  this  point — it  was  off  Rodosto — 
enter  a  small  steamer  which  does  not  halt 
when  requested,  and  so  is  fired  at  with 
"several  rounds"  from  a  rifle.  The  crew, 
on  being  told  to  abandon  her,  tumble  into 


TALES  OF  "THE  TRADE"      121 

their  boats  with  such  haste  that  they 
capsize  two  out  of  three.  "Fortunately," 
says  Ell,  "they  are  able  to  pick  up  every- 
body." You  can  imagine  to  yourself  the 
confusion  alongside,  the  raffle  of  odds  and 
ends  floating  out  of  the  boats,  and  the 
general  parti-coloured  hurrah's-nest  all  over 
the  bright  broken  water.  What  you  can- 
not imagine  is  this:  "An  American  gentle- 
man then  appeared  on  the  upper  deck 
who  informed  us  that  his  name  was  Silas 
Q.  Swing,  of  the  Chicago  Sun,  and  that 
he  was  pleased  to  make  our  acquaintance. 
He  then  informed  us  that  the  steamer 
was  proceeding  to  Chanak  and  he  wasn't 
sure  if  there  were  any  stores  aboard." 
If  anything  could  astonish  the  Trade  at 
this  late  date,  one  would  almost  fancy  that 
the  apparition  of  Silas  Q.  Swing  ("very 
happy  to  meet  you,  gentlemen")  might 
have  started  a  rivet  or  two  on  E  ll's  placid 
skin.  But  she  never  even  quivered.  She 
kept  a  lieutenant  of  the  name  of  D'Oyley 
Hughes,  an  expert  in  demolition  parties; 
and  he  went  aboard  the  tramp  and  reported 


SEA  WARFARE 

any  quantity  of  stores — a  six-inch  gun,  for 
instance,  lashed  across  the  top  of  the  fore- 
hatch  (Silas  Q.  Swing  must  have  been  an 
unobservant  journalist),  a  six-inch  gun- 
mounting  in  the  forehold,  pedestals  for 
twelve-pounders  thrown  in  as  dunnage,  the 
afterhold  full  of  six-inch  projectiles,  and 
a  scattering  of  other  commodities.  They 
put  the  demolition  charge  well  in  among 
the  six-inch  stuff,  and  she  took  it  all  to 
the  bottom  in  a  few  minutes,  after  being 
touched  off. 

"Simultaneously  with  the  sinking  of  the 
vessel,"  the  E  11  goes  on,  "smoke  was 
observed  to  the  eastward."  It  was  a 
steamer  who  had  seen  the  explosion  and 
was  running  for  Rodosto.  Ell  chased  her 
till  she  tied  up  to  Rodosto  pier,  and  then 
torpedoed  her  where  she  lay — a  heavily 
laden  store-ship  piled  high  with  packing- 
cases.  The  water  was  shallow  here,  and 
though  E  11  bumped  along  the  bottom, 
which  does  not  make  for  steadiness  of  aim, 
she  was  forced  to  show  a  good  deal  of  her 
only  periscope,  and  had  it  dented,  but  not 


TALES  OF  "THE  TRADE"         123 

damaged  by  rifle-fire  from  the  beach.  As 
she  moved  out  of  Rodosto  Bay  she  saw  a 
paddle-boat  loaded  with  barbed  wire,  which 
stopped  on  the  hail,  but  "as  we  ranged 
alongside  her,  attempted  to  ram  us,  but 
failed  owing  to  our  superior  speed."  Then 
she  ran  for  the  beach  "very  skilfully,"  keep- 
ing her  stern  to  E  11  till  she  drove  ashore 
beneath  some  cliffs.  The  demolition-squad 
were  just  getting  to  work  when  "a  party  of 
horsemen  appeared  on  the  cliffs  above  and 
opened  a  hot  fire  on  the  conning  tower." 
E  11  got  out,  but  owing  to  the  shoal  water 
it  was  some  time  before  she  could  get  under 
enough  to  fire  a  torpedo.  The  stern  of  a 
stranded  paddle-boat  is  no  great  target  and 
the  thing  exploded  on  the  beach.  Then  she 
"recharged  batteries  and  proceeded  slowly 
on  the  surface  towards  Constantinople." 
All  this  between  the  ordinary  office  hours  of 
10  A.  M.  and  4  p.  M. 

Her  next  day's  work  opens,  as  no  pallid 
writer  of  fiction  dare  begin,  thus:  "Having 
dived  unobserved  into  Constantinople,  ob- 
served, etc."  Her  observations  were  rather 


124  SEA  WARFARE 

hampered  by  cross-tides,  mud,  and  currents, 
as  well  as  the  vagaries  of  one  of  her  own 
torpedoes  which  turned  upside  down  and  ran 
about  promiscuously.  It  hit  something  at 
last,  and  so  did  another  shot  that  she  fired, 
but  the  waters  by  Constantinople  Arsenal 
are  not  healthy  to  linger  in  after  one  has 
scared  up  the  whole  sea-front,  so  "turned  to 
go  out."  Matters  were  a  little  better  below, 
and  E  11  in  her  perilous  passage  might 
have  been  a  lady  of  the  harem  tied  up  in 
a  sack  and  thrown  into  the  Bosporus.  She 
grounded  heavily;  she  bounced  up  30  feet, 
was  headed  down  again  by  a  manoeuvre 
easier  to  shudder  over  than  to  describe,  and 
when  she  came  to  rest  on  the  bottom  found 
herself  being  swivelled  right  round  the  com- 
pass. They  watched  the  compass  with  much 
interest.  "It  was  concluded,  therefore,  that 
the  vessel  (E  11  is  one  of  the  few  who 
speaks  of  herself  as  a  'vessel'  as  well  as  a 
'boat')  was  resting  on  the  shoal  under  the 
Leander  Tower,  and  was  being  turned  round 
by  the  current."  So  they  corrected  her, 
started  the  motors,  and  "bumped  gently 


TALES  OF  "THE  TRADE"      125 

down  into  85  feet  of  water"  with  no  more 
knowledge  than  the  lady  in  the  sack  where 
the  next  bump  would  land  them. 

THE  PREENING  PERCH 

And  the  following  day  was  spent  "resting 
in  the  centre  of  the  Sea  of  Marmora."  That 
was  their  favourite  preening  perch  between 
operations,  because  it  gave  them  a  chance  to 
tidy  the  boat  and  bathe,  and  they  were  a 
cleanly  people  both  in  their  methods  and 
their  persons.  When  they  boarded  a  craft 
and  found  nothing  of  consequence  they 
"parted  with  many  expressions  of  good 
will,"  and  E  11  "had  a  good  wash."  She 
gives  her  reasons  at  length;  for  going  in 
and  out  of  Constantinople  and  the  Straits 
is  all  in  the  day's  work,  but  going  dirty, 
you  understand,  is  serious.  She  had  "of  late 
noticed  the  atmosphere  in  the  boat  becom- 
ing very  oppressive,  the  reason  doubtless 
being  that  there  was  a  quantity  of  dirty  linen 
aboard,  and  also  the  scarcity  of  fresh  water 
necessitated  a  limit  being  placed  on  the 
frequency  of  personal  washing."  Hence  the 


126  SEA  WARFARE 

centre  of  the  Sea  of  Marmora;  all  hands 
playing  overside  and  as  much  laundry  work 
as  time  and  the  Service  allowed.  One  of  the 
reasons,  by  the  way,  why  we  shall  be  good 
friends  with  the  Turk  again  is  that  he  has 
many  of  our  ideas  about  decency. 

In  due  time  E  11  went  back  to  her  base. 
She  had  discovered  a  way  of  using  unspent 
torpedoes  twice  over,  which  surprised  the 
enemy,  and  she  had  as  nearly  as  possible 
been  cut  down  by  a  ship  which  she  thought 
was  running  away  from  her.  Instead  of 
which  (she  made  the  discovery  at  three 
thousand  yards,  both  craft  all  out)  the 
stranger  steamed  straight  at  her.  "The 
enemy  then  witnessed  a  somewhat  spec- 
tacular dive  at  full  speed  from  the  surface  to 
20  feet  in  as  many  seconds.  He  then  really 
did  turn  tail  and  was  seen  no  more."  Going 
through  the  Straits  she  observed  an  empty 
troopship  at  anchor,  but  reserved  her  tor- 
pedoes in  the  hope  of  picking  up  some 
battleships  lower  down.  Not  finding  these 
in  the  Narrows,  she  nosed  her  way  back 
and  sank  the  trooper,  "afterwards  continu- 


TALES  OF  "THE  TRADE"      127 

ing  journey  down  the  Straits."  Off  Kilid 
Bahr  something  happened;  she  got  out  of 
trim  and  had  to  be  fully  flooded  before  she 
could  be  brought  to  her  required  depth.  It 
might  have  been  whirlpools  under  water,  or 
— other  things.  (They  tell  a  story  of  a  boat 
which  once  went  mad  in  these  very  waters, 
and  for  no  reason  ascertainable  from  within 
plunged  to  depths  that  contractors  do  not 
allow  for;  rocketed  up  again  like  a  swordfish, 
and  would  doubtless  have  so  continued  till 
she  died,  had  not  something  she  had  fouled 
dropped  off  and  let  her  recover  her  com- 
posure.) 

An  hour  later:  "Heard  a  noise  similar 
to  grounding.  Knowing  this  to  be  im- 
possible in  the  water  in  which  the  boat  then 
was,  I  came  up  to  20  feet  to  investigate,  and 
observed  a  large  mine  preceding  the  peri- 
scope at  a  distance  of  about  20  feet,  which 
was  apparently  hung  up  by  its  moorings  to 
the  port  hydroplane."  Hydroplanes  are  the 
fins  at  bow  and  stern  which  regulate  a  sub- 
marine's diving.  A  mine  weighs  anything 
from  hundredweights  to  half -tons.  Some- 


128  SEA  WARFARE 

times  it  explodes  if  you  merely  think  about 
it;  at  others  you  can  batter  it  like  an  empty 
sardine-tin  and  it  submits  meekly;  but  at  no 
time  is  it  meant  to  wear  on  a  hydroplane. 
They  dared  not  come  up  to  unhitch  it, 
"owing  to  the  batteries  ashore,"  so  they 
pushed  the  dim  shape  ahead  of  them  till 
they  got  outside  Kum  Kale.  They  then 
went  full  astern,  and  emptied  the  after- 
tanks,  which  brought  the  bows  down,  and 
in  this  posture  rose  to  the  surface,  when 
"the  rush  of  water  from  the  screws  together 
with  the  sternway  gathered  allowed  the 
mine  to  fall  clear  of  the  vessel." 

Now   a  fool,   said   Dr.   Johnson,   would 
have  tried  to  describe  that. 


Ill 

RAVAGES  AND  REPAIRS 

BEFORE  we  pick  up  the  further  adventures 
of  H.M.  Submarine  E  14  and  her  partner 
Ell,  here  is  what  you  might  call  a  cutting- 
out  affair  in  the  Sea  of  Marmora  which  E  12 
(Lieutenant-Commander  K.  M.  Bruce)  put 
through  quite  on  the  old  lines. 

E  12's  main  motors  gave  trouble  from  the 
first,  and  she  seems  to  have  been  a  cripple 
for  most  of  that  trip.  She  sighted  two  small 
steamers,  one  towing  two,  and  the  other 
three,  sailing  vessels;  making  seven  keels  in 
all.  She  stopped  the  first  steamer,  noticed 
she  carried  a  lot  of  stores,  and,  moreover, 
that  her  crew — she  had  no  boats — were  all 
on  deck  in  life-belts.  Not  seeing  any  gun, 
E  12  ran  up  alongside  and  told  the  first 
lieutenant  to  board.  The  steamer  then 

129 


130  SEA  WARFARE 

threw  a  bomb  at  E  12,  which  struck,  but 
luckily  did  not  explode,  and  opened  fire  on 
the  boarding-party  with  rifles  and  a  con- 
cealed 1-in.  gun.  E  12  answered  with  her 
six-pounder,  and  also  with  rifles.  The  two 
sailing  ships  in  tow,  very  properly,  tried  to 
foul  E  12's  propellers  and  "also  opened  fire 
with  rifles." 

It  was  as  Orientally  mixed  a  fight  as  a 
man  could  wish:  The  first  lieutenant  and 
the  boarding-party  engaged  on  the  steamer, 
E  12  foul  of  the  steamer,  and  being  fouled  by 
the  sailing  ships;  the  six-pounder  methodi- 
cally perforating  the  steamer  from  bow  to 
stern;  the  steamer's  1-in.  gun  and  the  rifles 
from  the  sailing  ships  raking  everything  and 
everybody  else;  E  12's  coxswain  on  the 
conning-tower  passing  up  ammunition;  and 
E  12's  one  workable  motor  developing 
"slight  defects"  at,  of  course,  the  moment 
when  power  to  manoeuvre  was  vital. 

The  account  is  almost  as  difficult  to  dis- 
entangle as  the  actual  mess  must  have  been. 
At  any  rate,  the  six-pounder  caused  an  ex- 
plosion in  the  steamer's  ammunition,  where- 


TALES  OF  "THE  TRADE"      131 

by  the  steamer  sank  in  a  quarter  of  an  hour, 
giving  time — and  a  hot  time  it  must  have 
been — for  E  12  to  get  clear  of  her  and  to 
sink  the  two  sailing  ships.  She  then  chased 
the  second  steamer,  who  slipped  her  three 
tows  and  ran  for  the  shore.  E  12  knocked 
her  about  a  good  deal  with  gun-fire  as  she 
fled,  saw  her  drive  on  the  beach  well  alight, 
and  then,  since  the  beach  opened  fire  with  a 
gun  at  1500  yards,  went  away  to  retinker 
her  motors  and  write  up  her  log.  She  ap- 
proved of  her  first  lieutenant's  behaviour 
"under  very  trying  circumstances"  (this 
probably  refers  to  the  explosion  of  the  am- 
munition by  the  six-pounder  which,  doubt- 
less, jarred  the  boarding-party)  and  of  the 
cox  who  acted  as  ammunition-hoist;  and  of 
the  gun's  crew,  who  "all  did  very  well" 
under  rifle  and  small-gun  fire  "at  a  range  of 
about  ten  yards."  But  she  never  says  what 
she  really  said  about  her  motors. 

A  BRAWL  AT  A  PIER 

Now  we  will  take  E  14  on  various  work, 
either  alone  or  as  flagship  of  a  squadron  com- 


132  SEA  WARFARE 

posed  of  herself  and  Lieutenant-Commander 
Nasmith's  boat,  E  11.  Hers  was  a  busy 
midsummer,  and  she  came  to  be  intimate 
with  all  sort  of  craft — such  as  the  two-fun- 
nelled gunboat  off  Sar  Kioi,  who  "fired  at  us, 
and  missed  as  usual";  hospital  ships  going 
back  and  forth  unmolested  to  Constanti- 
nople; "the  gunboat  which  fired  at  me  on 
Sunday,"  and  other  old  friends,  afloat  and 
ashore. 

When  the  crew  of  the  Turkish  brigantine 
full  of  stores  got  into  their  boats  by  request, 
and  then  "all  stood  up  and  cursed  us,"  E  14 
did  not  lose  her  temper,  even  though  it  was 
too  rough  to  lie  alongside  the  abandoned 
ship.  She  told  Acting  Lieutenant  R.  W. 
Lawrence,  of  the  Royal  Naval  Reserve,  to 
swim  off  to  her,  which  he  did,  and  after  a 
"cursory  search" — Who  can  be  expected  to 
Sherlock  Holmes  for  hours  with  nothing  on? 
— set  fire  to  her  "with  the  aid  of  her  own 
matches  and  paraffin  oil." 

Then  E  14  had  a  brawl  with  a  steamer 
with  a  yellow  funnel,  blue  top  and  black 
band,  lying  at  a  pier  among  dhows.  The 


TALES  OF  "THE  TRADE"       133 

shore  took  a  hand  in  the  game  with  small 
guns  and  rifles,  and,  as  E  14  manoeuvred 
about  the  roadstead  "as  requisite"  there 
was  a  sudden  unaccountable  explosion  which 
strained  her  very  badly.  "I  think,"  she 
muses,  "I  must  have  caught  the  moorings 
of  a  mine  with  my  tail  as  I  was  turning, 
and  exploded  it.  It  is  possible  that  it  might 
have  been  a  big  shell  bursting  over  us,  but 
I  think  this  unlikely,  as  we  were  30  feet 
at  the  time."  She  is  always  a  philosophical 
boat,  anxious  to  arrive  at  the  reason  of 
facts,  and  when  the  game  is  against  her 
she  admits  it  freely. 

There  was  nondescript  craft  of  a  few 
hundred  tons,  who  "at  a  distance  did  not 
look  very  warlike,"  but  when  chased  sud- 
denly played  a  couple  of  six-pounders  and 
"got  off  two  dozen  rounds  at  us  before  we 
were  under.  Some  of  them  were  only  about 
20  yards  off."  And  when  a  wily  steamer, 
after  sidling  along  the  shore,  lay  up  in  front 
of  a  town  she  became  "indistinguishable 
from  the  houses,"  and  so  was  safe  because 
we  do  not  lowestrafe  open  towns. 


134  SEA  WARFARE 

Sailing  dhows  full  of  grain  had  to  be 
destroyed.  At  one  rendezvous,  while  wait- 
ing for  E  11,  E  14  dealt  with  three  such 
cases  and  then  "towed  the  crews  inshore 
and  gave  them  biscuits,  beef,  and  rum  and 
water,  as  they  were  rather  wet."  Passenger 
steamers  were  allowed  to  proceed,  because 
they  were  "full  of  people  of  both  sexes," 
which  is  an  unkultured  way  of  doing 
business. 

Here  is  another  instance  of  our  insular 
type  of  mind.  An  empty  dhow  is  passed 
which  E  14  was  going  to  leave  alone,  but 
it  occurs  to  her  that  the  boat  looks  "rather 
deserted,"  and  she  fancies  she  sees  two  heads 
in  the  water.  So  she  goes  back  half  a  mile, 
picks  up  a  couple  of  badly  exhausted  men, 
frightened  out  of  their  wits,  gives  them 
food  and  drink,  and  puts  them  aboard 
their  property.  Crews  that  jump  over- 
board have  to  be  picked  up,  even  if,  as 
happened  in  one  case,  there  are  twenty  of 
them  and  one  of  them  is  a  German  bank 
manager  taking  a  quantity  of  money  to  the 
Chanak  Bank.  Hospital  ships  are  carefully 


TALES  OF  "THE  TRADE"      135 

looked  over  as  they  come  and  go,  and  are 
left  to  their  own  devices;  but  they  are 
rather  a  nuisance  because  they  force  E  14 
and  others  to  dive  for  them  when  engaged 
in  stalking  warrantable  game.  There  were 
a  good  many  hospital  ships,  and  as  far  as 
we  can  make  out  they  all  played  fair. 
Ell  boarded  one  and  "reported  everything 
satisfactory." 

STRANGE  MESSMATES 

A  layman  cannot  tell  from  the  reports 
which  of  the  duties  demanded  the  most 
work — whether  the  continuous  clearing  out 
of  transports,  dhows,  and  sailing  ships, 
generally  found  close  to  the  well-gunned 
and  attentive  beach,  or  the  equally  con- 
tinuous attacks  on  armed  vessels  of  every 
kind.  Whatever  else  might  be  going  on, 
there  was  always  the  problem  how  to 
arrange  for  the  crews  of  sunk  ships.  If  a 
dhow  has  no  small  boats,  and  you  cannot 
find  one  handy,  you  have  to  take  the  crew 
aboard,  where  they  are  horribly  in  the  way, 


136  SEA  WARFARE 

and  add  to  the  oppressiveness  of  the  atmo- 
sphere— like  "the  nine  people,  including 
two  very  old  men,"  whom  E  14  made 
honorary  members  of  her  mess  for  several 
hours  till  she  could  put  them  ashore  after 
dark.  Oddly  enough  she  "could  not  get 
anything  out  of  them."  Imagine  nine 
bewildered  Moslems  suddenly  decanted  into 
the  reeking  clamorous  bowels  of  a  fabric 
obviously  built  by  Shaitan  himself,  and 
surrounded  by — but  our  people  are  people 
of  the  Book  and  not  dog-eating  Kaffirs,  and 
I  will  wager  a  great  deal  that  that  little 
company  went  ashore  in  better  heart  and 
stomach  than  when  they  were  passed  down 
the  conning-tower  hatch. 

Then  there  were  queer  amphibious  battles 
with  troops  who  had  to  be  shelled  as 
they  marched  towards  Gallipoli  along  the 
coast  roads.  E  14  went  out  with  E  11  on 
this  job,  early  one  morning,  each  boat  taking 
her  chosen  section  of  landscape.  Thrice 
E  14  rose  to  fire,  thinking  she  saw  the  dust 
of  feet,  but  "each  time  it  turned  out  to  be 
bullocks."  When  the  shelling  was  ended 


TALES  OF  "THE  TRADE"      137 

"I  think  the  troops  marching  along  that 
road  must  have  been  delayed  and  a  good 
many  killed."  The  Turks  got  up  a  field- 
gun  in  the  course  of  the  afternoon — your 
true  believer  never  hurries — which  out- 
ranged both  boats,  and  they  left  accordingly. 
The  next  day  she  changed  billets  with 
E  11,  who  had  the  luck  to  pick  up  and  put 
down  a  battleship  close  to  Gallipoli.  It 
turned  out  to  be  the  Barbarossa.  Mean- 
time E  14  got  a  5000-ton  supply  ship,  and 
later  had  to  burn  a  sailing  ship  loaded  with 
200  bales  of  leaf  and  cut  tobacco — Turkish 
tobacco!  Small  wonder  that  E  11  "came 
alongside  that  afternoon  and  remained  for 
an  hour" — probably  making  cigarettes. 

REFITTING  UNDER  DIFFICULTIES 

Then  E  14  went  back  to  her  base.  She 
had  a  hellish  time  among  the  Dardanelles 
nets;  was,  of  course,  fired  at  by  the  forts, 
just  missed  a  torpedo  from  the  beach,  scraped 
a  mine,  and  when  she  had  time  to  take  stock 
found  electric  mine-wires  twisted  round  her 


138  SEA  WARFARE 

propellers  and  all  her  hull  scraped  and  scored 
with  wire  marks.  But  that,  again,  was  only 
in  the  day's  work.  The  point  she  insisted 
upon  was  that  she  had  been  for  seventy  days 
in  the  Sea  of  Marmora  with  no  securer  base 
for  refit  than  the  centre  of  the  same,  and 
during  all  that  while  she  had  not  had  "any 
engine-room  defect  which  has  not  been  put 
right  by  the  engine-room  staff  of  the  boat." 
The  commander  and  the  third  officer  went 
sick  for  a  while;  the  first  lieutenant  got 
gastro-enteritis  and  was  in  bed  (if  you  could 
see  that  bed!)  "for  the  remainder  of  our 
stay  in  the  Sea  of  Marmora,"  but  "this  boat 
has  never  been  out  of  running  order."  The 
credit  is  ascribed  to  "the  excellence  of  my 
chief  engine-room  artificer,  James  Hollier 
Hague,  O.N.  227715,"  whose  name  is  duly 
submitted  to  the  authorities  "for  your 
consideration  for  advancement  to  the  rank 
of  warrant  officer." 

Seventy  days  of  every  conceivable  sort 
of  risk,  within  and  without,  in  a  boat  which 
is  all  engine-room,  except  where  she  is  sick- 
bay; twelve  thousand  miles  covered  since 


TALES  OF    'THE  TRADE"      139 

last  overhaul  and  "never  out  of  running 
order ' ' — thanks  to  Mr.  Hague.  Such  artists 
as  he  are  the  kind  of  engine-room  artificers 
that  commanders  intrigue  to  get  hold  of — 
each  for  his  own  boat — and  when  the  tales 
are  told  in  the  Trade,  their  names,  like  Abou 
Ben  Adhem's,  lead  all  the  rest. 

I  do  not  know  the  exact  line  of  demarca- 
tion between  engine-room  and  gunnery  re- 
pairs, but  I  imagine  it  is  faint  and  fluid. 
E  11,  for  example,  while  she  was  helping 
E  14  to  shell  a  beached  steamer,  smashed 
half  her  gun-mounting,  "the  gun-layer  being 
thrown  overboard,  and  the  gun  nearly  follow- 
ing him.*'  However,  the  mischief  was  re- 
paired in  the  next  twenty-four  hours,  which, 
considering  the  very  limited  deck  space  of  a 
submarine,  means  that  all  hands  must  have 
been  moderately  busy.  One  hopes  that 
they  had  not  to  dive  often  during  the  job. 

But  worse  is  to  come.  E  2  (Commander 
D.  Stocks)  carried  an  externally  mounted 
gun  which,  while  she  was  diving  up  the 
Dardanelles  on  business,  got  hung  up  in  the 
wires  and  stays  of  a  net.  She  saw  them 


140  SEA  WARFARE 

through  the  conning-tower  scuttles  at  a 
depth  of  80  ft. — one  wire  hawser  round  the 
gun,  another  round  the  conning-tower,  and 
so  on.  There  was  a  continuous  crackling  of 
small  explosions  overhead  which  she  thought 
were  charges  aimed  at  her  by  the  guard -boats 
who  watch  the  nets.  She  considered  her  po- 
sition for  a  while,  backed,  got  up  steam, 
barged  ahead,  and  shore  through  the  whole 
affair  in  one  wild  surge.  Imagine  the  roof 
of  a  navigable  cottage  after  it  has  snapped 
telegraph  lines  with  its  chimney,  and  you 
will  get  a  small  idea  of  what  happens  to  the 
hull  of  a  submarine  when  she  uses  her  gun  to 
break  wire  hawsers  with. 


TROUBLE  WITH  A  GUN 

E  2  was  a  wet,  strained,  and  uncomfort- 
able boat  for  the  rest  of  her  cruise.  She 
sank  steamers,  burned  dhows;  was  worried 
by  torpedo-boats  and  hunted  by  Hun  planes ; 
hit  bottom  freely  and  frequently;  silenced 
forts  that  fired  at  her  from  lonely  beaches; 
warned  villages  who  might  have  joined  in 


TALES  OF  "THE  TRADE"      141 

the  game  that  they  had  better  keep  to  farm- 
ing; shelled  railway  lines  and  stations; 
would  have  shelled  a  pier,  but  found  there 
was  a  hospital  built  at  one  end  of  it,  "so 
could  not  bombard";  came  upon  dhows 
crowded  with  "female  refugees"  which  she 
"allowed  to  proceed,"  and  was  presented 
with  fowls  in  return;  but  through  it  all  her 
chief  preoccupation  was  that  racked  and 
strained  gun  and  mounting.  When  there 
was  nothing  else  doing  she  reports  sourly 
that  she  "  worked  on  gun."  As  a  philosopher 
of  the  lower  deck  put  it :  ' :  'Tisn't  what 
you  blanky  do  that  matters,  it's  what  you 
blanky  have  to  do."  In  other  words,  worry, 
not  work,  kills. 

E  2's  gun  did  its  best  to  knock  the  heart 
out  of  them  all.  She  had  to  shift  the 
wretched  thing  twice;  once  because  the  bolts 
that  held  it  down  were  smashed  (the  wire 
hawser  must  have  pretty  well  pulled  it  off 
its  seat),  and  again  because  the  hull  beneath 
it  leaked  on  pressure.  She  went  down  to 
make  sure  of  it.  But  she  drilled  and  tapped 
and  adjusted,  till  in  a  short  time  the  gun 


142  SEA  WARFARE 

worked  again  and  killed  steamers  as  it  should. 
Meanwhile,  the  whole  boat  leaked.  All  the 
plates  under  the  old  gun-position  forward 
leaked;  she  leaked  aft  through  damaged 
hydroplane  guards,  and  on  her  way  home 
they  had  to  keep  the  water  down  by  hand 
pumps  while  she  was  diving  through  the 
nets.  Where  she  did  not  leak  outside  she 
leaked  internally,  tank  leaking  into  tank, 
so  that  the  petrol  got  into  the  main  fresh- 
water supply  and  the  men  had  to  be  put  on 
allowance.  The  last  pint  was  served  out 
when  she  was  in  the  narrowest  part  of  the 
Narrows,  a  place  where  one's  mouth  may 
well  go  dry  of  a  sudden. 

Here  for  the  moment  the  records  end.  I 
have  been  at  some  pains  not  to  pick  and 
choose  among  them.  So  far  from  doctoring 
or  heightening  any  of  the  incidents,  I  have 
rather  understated  them;  but  I  hope  I  have 
made  it  clear  that  through  all  the  haste  and 
fury  of  these  multiplied  actions,  when  life 
and  death  and  destruction  turned  on  the 
twitch  of  a  finger,  not  one  life  of  any  non- 
combatant  was  wittingly  taken.  They  were 


TALES  OF  "THE  TRADE"      143 

carefully  picked  up  or  picked  out,  taken 
below,  transferred  to  boats,  and  despatched 
or  personally  conducted  in  the  intervals  of 
business  to  the  safe,  unexploding  beach. 
Sometimes  they  part  from  their  chaperones 
"with  many  expressions  of  good  will,"  at 
others  they  seem  greatly  relieved  and  rather 
surprised  at  not  being  knocked  on  the  head 
after  the  custom  of  their  Allies.  But  the 
boats  with  a  hundred  things  on  their  minds 
no  more  take  credit  for  their  humanity  than 
their  commanders  explain  the  feats  for  which 
they  won  their  respective  decorations. 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND 
(1916) 


"HAVE  you  news  of  my  boy  Jack?" 

Not  this  tide. 
"When  d'you  think  that  he'll  come  back?" 

Not  with  this  wind  blowing,  and  this  tide. 

"Has  any  one  else  had  word  of  him?" 

Not  this  tide. 
For  what  is  sunk  witt  hardly  swim, 

Not  with  this  wind  blowing  and  this  tide. 

"Oh,  dear,  what  comfort  can  I  find?" 

None  this  tide, 

Nor  any  tide, 
Except  he  didn't  shame  his  kind 

Not  even  with  that  wind  blowing  and 
that  tide. 

Then  hold  your  head  up  all  the  more. 

This  tide, 

And  every  tide, 
Because  he  was  the  son  you  bore, 

And  gave  to  that  wind  blowing  and  that 
tide  I 

147 


STORIES  OF  THE  BATTLE 

CRIPPLE  AND  PARALYTIC 

THERE  was  much  destroyer-work  in  the 
Battle  of  Jutland.  The  actual  battle  field 
may  not  have  been  more  than  twenty 
thousand  square  miles,  but  the  incidental 
patrols,  from  first  to  last,  must  have  covered 
many  times  that  area.  Doubtless  the  next 
generation  will  comb  out  every  detail  of 
it.  All  we  need  remember  is  there  were 
many  squadrons  of  battleships  and  cruisers 
engaged  over  the  face  of  the  North  Sea, 
and  that  they  were  accompanied  in  their 
dread  comings  and  goings  by  multitudes  of 
destroyers,  who  attacked  the  enemy  both  by 
day  and  by  night  from  the  afternoon  of 
May  31  to  the  morning  of  June  1,  1916. 

149 


150  SEA  WARFARE 

We  are  too  close  to  the  gigantic  canvas 
to  take  in  the  meaning  of  the  picture;  our 
children  stepping  backward  through  the 
years  may  get  the  true  perspective  and 
proportions. 

To  recapitulate  what  every  one  knows. 

The  German  fleet  came  out  of  its  North 
Sea  ports,  scouting  ships  ahead;  then  de- 
stroyers, cruisers,  battle-cruisers,  and,  last, 
the  main  battle-fleet  in  the  rear.  It  moved 
north,  parallel  with  the  coast  of  stolen 
Schleswig-Holstein  and  Jutland.  Our  fleets 
were  already  out;  the  main  battle  fleet 
(Admiral  Jellicoe)  sweeping  down  from  the 
north,  and  our  battle-cruiser  fleet  (Admiral 
Beatty)  feeling  for  the  enemy.  Our  scouts 
came  in  contact  with  the  enemy  on  the 
afternoon  of  May  31  about  100  miles  off 
the  Jutland  coast,  steering  north-west. 
They  satisfied  themselves  he  was  in  strength, 
and  reported  accordingly  to  our  battle-cruiser 
fleet,  which  engaged  the  enemy's  battle- 
cruisers  at  about  half -past  three  o'clock. 
The  enemy  steered  south-east  to  rejoin  their 
own  fleet,  which  was  coming  up  from  that 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND  151 

quarter.    We   fought   him    on   a   parallel 
course  as  he  ran  for  more  than  an  hour. 

Then  his  battle-fleet  came  in  sight,  and 
Beatty's  fleet  went  about  and  steered  north- 
west in  order  to  retire  on  our  battle-fleet, 
which  was  hurrying  down  from  the  north. 
We  returned  fighting  very  much  over  the 
same  waters  as  we  had  used  in  our  slant 
south.  The  enemy  up  till  now  had  lain  to 
the  eastward  of  us,  whereby  he  had  the 
advantage  in  that  thick  weather  of  seeing 
our  hulls  clear  against  the  afternoon  light, 
while  he  himself  worked  in  the  mists.  We 
then  steered  a  little  to  the  north-west  bear- 
ing him  off  towards  the  east  till  at  six  o'clock 
Beatty  had  headed  the  enemy's  leading 
ships  and  our  main  battle-fleet  came  in  sight 
from  the  north.  The  enemy  broke  back  in 
a  loop,  first  eastward,  then  south,  then  south- 
west as  our  fleet  edged  him  off  from  the 
land,  and  our  main  battle-fleet,  coming  up 
behind  them,  followed  in  their  wake.  Thus 
for  a  while  we  had  the  enemy  to  westward 
of  us,  where  he  made  a  better  mark;  but  the 
day  was  closing  and  the  weather  thickened, 


152  SEA  WARFARE 

and  the  enemy  wanted  to  get  away.  At  a 
quarter  past  eight  the  enemy,  still  heading 
south-west,  was  covered  by  his  destroyers 
in  a  great  screen  of  grey  smoke,  and  he  got 
away. 

NIGHT  AND  MORNING 

As  darkness  fell,  our  fleets  lay  between 
the  enemy  and  his  home  ports.  During  the 
night  our  heavy  ships,  keeping  well  clear  of 
possible  mine-fields,  swept  down  south  to 
south  and  west  of  the  Horns  Reef,  so  that 
they  might  pick  him  up  in  the  morning. 
When  morning  came  our  main  fleet  could 
find  no  trace  of  the  enemy  to  the  southward, 
but  our  destroyer-flotillas  further  north 
had  been  very  busy  with  enemy  ships, 
apparently  running  for  the  Horns  Reef 
Channel.  It  looks,  then,  as  if  when  we  lost 
sight  of  the  enemy  in  the  smoke  screen  and 
the  darkness  he  had  changed  course  and 
broken  for  home  astern  our  main  fleets. 
And  whether  that  was  a  sound  manoeuvre 
or  otherwise,  he  and  the  still  flows  of  the 
North  Sea  alone  can  tell. 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    153 

But  how  is  a  layman  to  give  any  coherent 
account  of  an  affair  where  a  whole  country's 
coast-line  was  background  to  battle  covering 
geographical  degrees?  The  records  give  an 
impression  of  illimitable  grey  waters,  nicked 
on  their  uncertain  horizons  with  the  smudge 
and  blur  of  ships  sparkling  with  fury  against 
ships  hidden  under  the  curve  of  the  world. 
One  sees  these  distances  maddeningly  ob- 
scured by  walking  mists  and  weak  fogs,  or 
wiped  out  by  layers  of  funnel  and  gun  smoke, 
and  realises  how,  at  the  pace  the  ships 
were  going,  anything  might  be  stumbled  up- 
on in  the  haze  or  charge  out  of  it  when  it 
lifted.  One  comprehends,  too,  how  the  far- 
off  glare  of  a  great  vessel  afire  might  be 
reported  as  a  local  fire  on  a  near-by  enemy,; 
or  vice  versa;  how  a  silhouette  caught,  for  an 
instant,  in  a  shaft  of  pale  light  let  down 
from  the  low  sky  might  be  fatally  difficult 
to  identify  till  too  late.  But  add  to  all 
these  inevitable  confusions  and  misreckon- 
ings  of  time,  shape,  and  distance,  charges 
at  every  angle  of  squadrons  through  and 
across  other  squadrons;  sudden  shifts  of  the 


154  SEA  WARFARE 

centres  of  the  fights,  and  even  swifter 
restorations;  wheelings,  sweepings,  and  re- 
groupments  such  as  accompany  the  passage 
across  space  of  colliding  universes.  Then 
blanket  the  whole  inferno  with  the  darkness 
of  night  at  full  speed,  and — see  what  you 
can  make  of  it. 

THREE  DESTROYERS 

A  little  time  after  the  action  began  to 
heat  up  between  our  battle-cruisers  and 
the  enemy's,  eight  or  ten  of  our  destroyers 
opened  the  ball  for  their  branch  of  the 
service  by  breaking  up  the  attack  of  an 
enemy  light  cruiser  and  fifteen  destroyers. 
Of  these  they  accounted  for  at  least  two 
destroyers — some  think  more — and  drove 
the  others  back  on  their  battle-cruisers. 
This  scattered  that  fight  a  good  deal  over 
the  sea.  Three  of  our  destroyers  held  on 
for  the  enemy's  battle-fleet,  who  came 
down  on  them  at  ranges  which  eventually 
grew  less  than  3000  yards.  Our  people 
ought  to  have  been  lifted  off  the  seas 
bodily,  but  they  managed  to  fire  a  couple 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    155 

of  torpedoes  apiece  while  the  range  was 
diminishing.  They  had  no  illusions.  Says 
one  of  the  three,  speaking  of  her  second 
shot,  which  she  loosed  at  fairly  close  range, 
"This  torpedo  was  fired  because  it  was  con- 
sidered very  unlikely  that  the  ship  would 
escape  disablement  before  another  oppor- 
tunity offered."  But  still  they  lived — three 
destroyers  against  all  a  battle-cruiser  fleet's 
quick-firers,  as  well  as  the  fire  of  a  batch 
of  enemy  destroyers  at  600  yards.  And  they 
were  thankful  for  small  mercies.  "The 
position  being  favourable,"  a  third  torpedo 
was  fired  from  each  while  they  yet  floated. 

At  2500  yards,  one  destroyer  was  hit 
somewhere  in  the  vitals  and  swerved  badly 
across  her  next  astern,  who  "was  obliged  to 
alter  course  to  avoid  a  collision,  thereby  fail- 
ing to  fire  a  fourth  torpedo."  Then  that  next 
astern  "observed  signal  for  destroyers'  re- 
call," and  went  back  to  report  to  her  flotilla 
captain — alone.  Of  her  two  companions, 
one  was  "badly  hit  and  remained  stopped 
between  the  lines."  The  other  "remained 
stopped,  but  was  afloat  when  last  seen." 


156  SEA  WARFARE 

Ships  that  "remain  stopped"  are  liable  to 
be  rammed  or  sunk  by  methodical  gun-fire. 
That  was,  perhaps,  fifty  minutes'  work  put 
in  before  there  was  any  really  vicious  "edge" 
to  the  action,  and  it  did  not  steady  the 
nerves  of  the  enemy  battle-cruisers  any 
more  than  another  attack  made  by  another 
detachment  of  ours. 

"What  does  one  do  when  one  passes  a 
ship  that  'remains  stopped'?"  I  asked  of  a 
youth  who  had  had  experience. 

"Nothing  special.  They  cheer,  and  you 
cheer  back.  One  doesn't  think  about  it 
till  afterwards.  You  see,  it  may  be  your 
luck  in  another  minute." 

LUCK 

There  were  many  other  torpedo  attacks 
in  all  parts  of  the  battle  that  misty  after- 
noon, including  a  quaint  episode  of  an 
enemy  light  cruiser  who  "looked  as  if  she 
were  trying"  to  torpedo  one  of  our  battle- 
cruisers  while  the  latter  was  particularly 
engaged.  A  destroyer  of  ours,  returning 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    157 

from  a  special  job  which  required  delicacy, 
was  picking  her  way  back  at  30  knots 
through  batches  of  enemy  battle-cruisers 
and  light  cruisers  with  the  idea  of  attaching 
herself  to  the  nearest  destroyer-flotilla  and 
making  herself  useful.  It  occurred  to  her 
that  as  she  "was  in  a  most  advantageous 
position  for  repelling  enemy's  destroyers 
endeavouring  to  attack,  she  could  not  do 
better  than  to  remain  on  the  'engaged 
bow*  of  our  battle-cruiser."  So  she  re- 
mained and  considered  things. 

There  was  an  enemy  battle-cruiser  squad- 
ron in  the  offing;  with  several  enemy 
light  cruisers  ahead  of  that  squadron,  and 
the  weather  was  thickish  and  deceptive. 
She  sighted  the  enemy  light  cruiser,  "class 
uncertain,'*  only  a  few  thousand  yards  away, 
and  "decided  to  attack  her  in  order  to 
frustrate  her  firing  torpedoes  at  our  battle- 
fleet."  (This  in  case  the  authorities  should 
think  that  light  cruiser  wished  to  buy 
rubber.)  So  she  fell  upon  the  light  cruiser 
with  every  gun  she  had,  at  between  two 
and  four  thousand  yards,  and  secured  a 


158  SEA  WARFARE 

number  of  hits,  just  the  same  as  at  target 
practice.  While  thus  occupied  she  sighted 
out  of  the  mist  a  squadron  of  enemy  battle- 
cruisers  that  had  worried  her  earlier  in  the 
afternoon.  Leaving  the  light  cruiser,  she 
closed  to  what  she  considered  a  reasonable 
distance  of  the  newcomers,  and  let  them 
have,  as  she  thought,  both  her  torpedoes. 
She  possessed  an  active  acting  sub-lieu- 
tenant, who,  though  officers  of  that  rank 
think  otherwise,  is  not  very  far  removed 
from  an  ordinary  midshipman  of  the  type 
one  sees  in  tow  of  relatives  at  the  Army 
and  Navy  Stores.  He  sat  astride  one  of 
the  tubes  to  make  quite  sure  things  were 
in  order,  and  fired  when  the  sights  came  on. 
But,  at  that  very  moment,  a  big  shell 
hit  the  destroyer  on  the  side  and  there 
was  a  tremendous  escape  of  steam.  Believ- 
ing— since  she  had  seen  one  torpedo  leave 
the  tube  before  the  smash  came — believing 
that  both  her  tubes  had  been  fired,  the 
destroyer  turned  away  "at  greatly  reduced 
speed"  (the  shell  reduced  it),  and  passed, 
quite  reasonably  close,  the  light  cruiser 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    159 

whom  she  had  been  hammering  so  faithfully 
till  the  larger  game  appeared.  Meantime, 
the  sub-lieutenant  was  exploring  what 
damage  had  been  done  by  the  big  shell. 
He  discovered  that  only  one  of  the  two 
torpedoes  had  left  the  tubes,  and  "observing 
enemy  light  cruiser  beam  on  and  apparently 
temporarily  stopped,"  he  fired  the  provi- 
dential remainder  at  her,  and  it  hit  her 
below  the  conning-tower  and  well  and  truly 
exploded,  as  was  witnessed  by  the  sub- 
lieutenant himself,  the  commander,  a 
leading  signalman,  and  several  other  ratings. 
Luck  continued  to  hold!  The  acting  sub- 
lieutenant further  reported  that  "we  still 
had  three  torpedoes  left  and  at  the  same 
time  drew  my  attention  to  enemy's  line 
of  battleships."  They  rather  looked  as  if 
they  were  coming  down  with  intent  to 
assault.  So  the  sub-lieutenant  fired  the 
rest  of  the  torpedoes,  which  at  least  started 
off  correctly  from  the  shell-shaken  tubes, 
and  must  have  crossed  the  enemy's  line. 
When  torpedoes  turn  up  among  a  squadron, 
they  upset  the  steering  and  distract  the 


160  SEA  WARFARE 

attention  of  all  concerned.  Then  the  de- 
stroyer judged  it  time  to  take  stock  of  her 
injuries.  Among  other  minor  defects  she 
could  neither  steam,  steer,  nor  signal. 

TOWING  UNDER  DIFFICULTIES 

Mark  how  virtue  is  rewarded!  Another 
of  our  destroyers  an  hour  or  so  previously 
had  been  knocked  clean  out  of  action, 
before  she  had  done  anything,  by  a  big  shell 
which  gutted  a  boiler-room  and  started  an 
oil  fire.  (That  is  the  drawback  to  oil.) 
She  crawled  out  between  the  battleships  till 
she  "reached  an  area  of  comparative  calm" 
and  repaired  damage.  She  says:  "The  fire 
having  been  dealt  with  it  was  found  a  mat 
kept  the  stokehold  dry.  My  only  trouble 
now  being  lack  of  speed,  I  looked  round  for 
useful  employment,  and  saw  a  destroyer 
in  great  difficulties,  so  closed  her."  That 
destroyer  was  our  paralytic  friend  of  the 
intermittent  torpedo-tubes,  and  a  grateful 
ship  she  was  when  her  crippled  sister  (but 
still  good  for  a  few  knots)  offered  her  a 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    161 

tow,  "under  very  trying  conditions  with 
large  enemy  ships  approaching."  So  the 
two  set  off  together,  Cripple  and  Paralytic, 
with  heavy  shells  falling  round  them,  as 
sociable  as  a  couple  of  lame  hounds.  Cripple 
worked  up  to  12  knots,  and  the  weather 
grew  vile,  and  the  tow  parted.  Paralytic, 
by  this  time,  had  raised  steam  in  a  boiler  or 
two,  and  made  shift  to  get  along  slowly  on 
her  own,  Cripple  hirpling  beside  her,  till 
Paralytic  could  not  make  any  more  headway 
in  that  rising  sea,  and  Cripple  had  to  tow 
her  once  more.  Once  more  the  tow  parted. 
So  they  tied  Paralytic  up  rudely  and  effect- 
ively with  a  cable  round  her  after  bollards 
and  gun  (presumably  because  of  strained 
forward  bulkheads)  and  hauled  her  stern- 
first,  through  heavy  seas,  at  continually 
reduced  speeds,  doubtful  of  their  position, 
unable  to  sound  because  of  the  seas,  and 
much  pestered  by  a  wind  which  backed 
without  warning,  till,  at  last,  they  made 
land,  and  turned  into  the  hospital  appointed 
for  brave  wounded  ships.  Everybody 
speaks  well  of  Cripple.  Her  name  crops 


162  SEA  WARFARE 

up  in  several  reports,  with  such  compli- 
ments as  the  men  of  the  sea  use  when  they 
see  good  work.  She  herself  speaks  well  of 
her  lieutenant,  who,  as  executive  officer, 
"took  charge  of  the  fire  and  towing  arrange- 
ments in  a  very  creditable  manner,"  and  also 
of  Tom  Battye  and  Thomas  Kerr,  engine- 
room  artificer  and  stoker  petty  officer,  who 
"were  in  the  stokehold  at  the  time  of  the 
shell  striking,  and  performed  cool  and 
prompt  decisive  action,  although  both  suf- 
fering from  shock  and  slight  injuries." 

USEFUL  EMPLOYMENT 

Have  you  ever  noticed  that  men  who 
do  Homeric  deeds  often  describe  them  in 
Homeric  language?  The  sentence  "I  looked 
round  for  useful  employment"  is  worthy 
of  Ulysses  when  "there  was  an  evil  sound 
at  the  ships  of  men  who  perished  and  of 
the  ships  themselves  broken  at  the  same 
time." 

Roughly,  very  roughly,  speaking,  our 
destroyers  enjoyed  three  phases  of  "prompt 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    163 

decisive  action"  —the  first,  a  period  of  day- 
light attacks  (from  4  to  6  p.  M.)  such  as 
the  one  I  have  just  described,  while  the 
battle  was  young  and  the  light  fairly  good 
on  the  afternoon  of  May  31;  the  second, 
towards  dark,  when  the  light  had  lessened 
and  the  enemy  were  more  uneasy,  and,  I 
think,  in  more  scattered  formation;  the 
third,  when  darkness  had  fallen,  and  the 
destroyers  had  been  strung  out  astern  with 
orders  to  help  the  enemy  home,  which  they 
did  all  night  as  opportunity  offered.  One 
cannot  say  whether  the  day  or  the  night 
work  was  the  more  desperate.  From  private 
advices,  the  young  gentlemen  concerned 
seem  to  have  functioned  with  efficiency 
either  way.  As  one  of  them  said:  "After 
a  bit,  you  see,  we  were  all  pretty  much  on 
our  own,  and  you  could  really  find  out  what 
your  ship  could  do." 

I  will  tell  you  later  of  a  piece  of  night 
work  not  without  merit. 


II 

THE  NIGHT  HUNT 
BAMMING  AN  ENEMY  CRUISER 

As  I  said,  we  will  confine  ourselves  to 
something  quite  sane  and  simple  which 
does  not  involve  more  than  half-a-dozen 
different  reports. 

When  the  German  fleet  ran  for  home, 
on  the  night  of  May  31,  it  seems  to  have 
scattered — "starred,"  I  believe,  is  the  word 
for  the  evolution — in  a  general  sauve  qui 
pent,  while  the  Devil,  livelily  represented 
by  our  destroyers,  took  the  hindmost. 
Our  flotillas  were  strung  out  far  and  wide 
on  this  job.  One  man  compared  it  to 
hounds  hunting  half  a  hundred  separate 
foxes. 

I  take  the  adventures  of  several  couples 

165 


166  SEA  WARFARE 

of  destroyers  who,  on  the  night  of  May  31, 
were  nosing  along  somewhere  towards  the 
Schleswig-Holstein  coast,  ready  to  chop 
any  Hun-stuff  coming  back  to  earth  by 
that  particular  road.  The  leader  of  one 
line  was  Gehenna,  and  the  next  two  ships 
astern  of  her  were  Eblis  and  Shaitan,  in  the 
order  given.  There  were  others,  of  course, 
but  with  the  exception  of  one  Goblin  they 
don't  come  violently  into  this  tale.  There 
had  been  a  good  deal  of  promiscuous  firing 
that  evening,  and  actions  were  going  on  all 
round.  Towards  midnight  our  destroyers 
were  overtaken  by  several  three-  and  four- 
funnel  German  ships  (cruisers  they  thought) 
hurrying  home.  At  this  stage  of  the  game 
anybody  might  have  been  anybody — pur- 
suer or  pursued.  The  Germans  took  no 
chances,  but  switched  on  their  searchlights 
and  opened  fire  on  Gehenna.  Her  acting 
sub-lieutenant  reports:  "A  salvo  hit  us 
forward.  I  opened  fire  with  the  after-guns. 
A  shell  then  struck  us  in  a  steam-pipe,  and  I 
could  see  nothing  but  steam.  But  both 
starboard  torpedo-tubes  were  fired." 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    167 

Eblis,  Gehenna's  next  astern,  at  once 
fired  a  torpedo  at  the  second  ship  in  the 
German  line,  a  four-funnelled  cruiser,  and 
hit  her  between  the  second  funnel  and  the 
mainmast,  when  "she  appeared  to  catch 
fire  fore  and  aft  simultaneously,  heeled 
right  over  to  starboard,  and  undoubtedly 
sank."  Eblis  loosed  off  a  second  torpedo 
and  turned  aside  to  reload,  firing  at  the 
same  time  to  distract  the  enemy's  attention 
from  Gehenna,  who  was  now  ablaze  fore 
and  aft.  Gehenna's  acting  sub-lieutenant 
(the  only  executive  officer  who  survived) 
says  that  by  the  time  the  steam  from  the 
broken  pipe  cleared  he  found  Gehenna 
stopped,  nearly  everybody  amidships  killed 
or  wounded,  the  cartridge-boxes  round  the 
guns  exploding  one  after  the  other  as  the 
fires  took  hold,  and  the  enemy  not  to  be 
seen.  Three  minutes  or  less  did  all  that 
damage.  Eblis  had  nearly  finished  reload- 
ing when  a  shot  struck  the  davit  that  was 
swinging  her  last  torpedo  into  the  tube  and 
wounded  all  hands  concerned.  Thereupon 
she  dropped  torpedo  work,  fired  at  an  enemy 


168  SEA  WARFARE 

searchlight  which  winked  and  went  out,  and 
was  closing  in  to  help  Gehenna  when  she 
found  herself  under  the  noses  of  a  couple  of 
enemy  cruisers.  "The  nearer  one,"  he  says, 
"altered  course  to  ram  me  apparently." 
The  Senior  Service  writes  in  curiously 
lawyer-like  fashion,  but  there  is  no  denying 
that  they  act  quite  directly.  "I  therefore 
put  my  helm  hard  aport  and  the  two  ships 
met  and  rammed  each  other,  port  bow  to 
port  bow."  There  could  have  been  no  time 
to  think  and,  for  Eblis's  commander  on  the 
bridge,  none  to  gather  information.  But 
he  had  observant  subordinates,  and  he 
writes — and  I  would  humbly  suggest  that 
the  words  be  made  the  ship's  motto  for 
evermore — he  writes,  "Those  aft  noted" 
that  the  enemy  cruiser  had  certain  marks 
on  her  funnel  and  certain  arrangements  of 
derricks  on  each  side  which,  quite  apart 
from  the  evidence  she  left  behind  her, 
betrayed  her  class.  Eblis  and  she  met. 
Says  Eblis:  "I  consider  I  must  have  con- 
siderably damaged  this  cruiser,  as  20  feet 
of  her  side  plating  was  left  in  my  foc'sle." 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND     169 

Twenty  feet  of  ragged  rivet-slinging  steel, 
razoring  and  reaping  about  in  the  dark  on 
a  foc'sle  that  had  collapsed  like  a  concertina ! 
It  was  very  fair  plating  too.  There  were 
side-scuttle  holes  in  it — what  we  'passengers 
would  call  portholes.  But  it  might  have 
been  better,  for  Eblis  reports  sorrowfully, 
"by  the  thickness  of  the  coats  of  paint 
(duly  given  in  32nds  of  the  inch)  she  would 
not  appear  to  have  been  a  very  new  ship." 

A  FUGITIVE  ON  FIRE 

New  or  old,  the  enemy  had  \ione  her 
best.  She  had  completely  demolished 
Eblis's  bridge  and  searchlight  platform, 
brought  down  the  mast  and  the  fore-funnel, 
ruined  the  whaler  and  the  dinghy,  split  the 
foc'sle  open  above  water  from  the  stem  to 
the  galley  which  is  abaft  the  bridge,  and 
below  water  had  opened  it  up  from  the 
stem  to  the  second  bulkhead.  She  had 
further  ripped  off  Eblis's  skin-plating  for 
an  amazing  number  of  yards  on  one  side 
of  her,  and  had  fired  a  couple  of  large- 


170  SEA  WARFARE 

calibre  shells  into  Eblis  at  point-blank 
range,  narrowly  missing  her  vitals.  Even 
so,  Eblis  is  as  impartial  as  a  prize-court. 
She  reports  that  the  second  shot,  a  trifle 
of  eight  inches,  "may  have  been  fired  at  a 
different  time  or  just  after  colliding."  But 
the  night  was  yet  young,  and  "just  after 
getting  clear  of  this  cruiser  an  enemy  battle- 
cruiser  grazed  past  our  stern  at  high  speed" 
and  again  the  judgmatic  mind — "I  think 
she  must  have  intended  to  ram  us."  She 
was  a  large  three-funnelled  thing,  her  centre 
funnel  shot  away  and  "lights  were  flicker- 
ing under  her  foc'sle  as  if  she  was  on  fire 
forward."  Fancy  the  vision  of  her,  hurtling 
out  of  the  dark,  red -lighted  from  within,  and 
fleeing  on  like  a  man  with  his  throat  cut ! 

[As  an  interlude,  all  enemy  cruisers  that 
night  were  not  keen  on  ramming.  They 
wanted  to  get  home.  A  man  T  know  who 
was  on  another  part  of  the  drive  saw  a 
covey  bolt  through  our  destroyers;  and 
had  just  settled  himself  for  a  shot  at  one  of 
them  when  the  night  threw  up  a  second 
bird  coming  down  full  speed  on  his  other 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    171 

beam.  He  had  bare  time  to  jink  between 
the  two  as  they  whizzed  past.  One  switched 
on  her  searchlight  and  fired  a  whole  salvo 
at  him  point  blank.  The  heavy  stuff  went 
between  his  funnels.  She  must  have  sighted 
along  her  own  beam  of  light,  which  was 
about  a  thousand  yards. 

"How  did  you  feel?"  I  asked. 

"I  was  rather  sick.  It  was  my  best 
chance  all  that  night,  and  I  had  to  miss  it 
or  be  cut  in  two." 

"What  happened  to  the  cruisers?" 

"Oh,  they  went  on,  and  I  heard  'em 
being  attended  to  by  some  of  our  fellows. 
They  didn't  know  what  they  were  doing, 
or  they  couldn't  have  missed  me  sitting, 
the  way  they  did."] 

THE  CONFIDENTIAL  BOOKS 

After  all  that  Eblis  picked  herself  up, 
and  discovered  that  she  was  still  alive,  with 
a  dog's  chance  of  getting  to  port.  But  she 
did  not  bank  on  it.  That  grand  slam  had 
wrecked  the  bridge,  pinning  the  commander 


172  SEA  WARFARE 

under  the  wreckage.  By  the  time  he  had 
extricated  himself  he  "  considered  it  advisable 
to  throw  overboard  the  steel  chest  and  dis- 
patch-box of  confidential  and  secret  books." 
These  are  never  allowed  to  fall  into  strange 
hands,  and  their  proper  disposal  is  the  last 
step  but  one  in  the  ritual  of  the  burial 
service  of  His  Majesty's  ships  at  sea. 
Gehenna,  afire  and  sinking,  out  somewhere 
in  the  dark,  was  going  through  it  on  her 
own  account.  This  is  her  acting  sub- 
lieutenant's report:  "The  confidential 
books  were  got  up.  The  first  lieutenant 
gave  the  order:  *  Every  man  aft,'  and  the 
confidential  books  were  thrown  overboard. 
The  ship  soon  afterwards  heeled  over  to 
starboard  and  the  bows  went  under.  The 
first  lieutenant  gave  the  order:  'Every- 
body for  themselves.'  The  ship  sank  in 
about  a  minute,  the  stern  going  straight 
up  into  the  air." 

But  it  was  not  written  in  the  Book  of 
Fate  that  stripped  and  battered  Eblis 
should  die  that  night  as  Gehenna  died. 
After  the  burial  of  the  books  it  was  found 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    173 

that  the  several  fires  on  her  were  manage- 
able, that  she  "was  not  making  water  aft 
of  the  damage,"  which  meant  two-thirds  of 
her  were,  more  or  less,  in  commission,  and, 
best  of  all,  that  three  boilers  were  usable  in 
spite  of  the  cruiser's  shells.  So  she  "shaped 
course  and  speed  to  make  the  least  water 
and  the  most  progress  towards  land."  On 
the  way  back  the  wind  shifted  eight  points 
without  warning — it  was  this  shift,  if  you 
remember,  that  so  embarrassed  Cripple  and 
Paralytic  on  their  homeward  crawl — and, 
what  with  one  thing  and  another,  Eblis 
was  unable  to  make  port  till  the  scanda- 
lously late  hour  of  noon  on  June  2,  "the 
mutual  ramming  having  occurred  about 
11 . 40  P.  M.  on  May  31."  She  says,  this  time 
without  any  legal  reservation  whatever,  "I 
cannot  speak  too  highly  of  the  courage, 
discipline,  and  devotion  of  the  officers  and 
ship's  company." 

Her  recommendations  are  a  Compendium 
of  Godly  Deeds  for  the  Use  of  Mariners. 
They  cover  pretty  much  all  that  man  may 
be  expected  to  do.  There  was,  as  there 


174  SEA  WARFARE 

always  is,  a  first  lieutenant  who,  while  his 
commander  was  being  extricated  from  the 
bridge  wreckage,  took  charge  of  affairs  and 
steered  the  ship  first  from  the  engine-room, 
or  what  remained  of  it,  and  later  from  aft, 
and  otherwise  manoeuvred  as  requisite, 
among  doubtful  bulkheads.  In  his  leisure 
he  "improvised  means  of  signalling,"  and  if 
there  be  not  one  joyous  story  behind  that 
smooth  sentence  I  am  a  Hun ! 


THE  ART  OF  IMPROVISING 

They  all  improvised  like  the  masters  of 
craft  they  were.  The  chief  engine-room 
artificer,  after  he  had  helped  to  put  out  fires, 
improvised  stops  to  the  gaps  which  were 
left  by  the  carrying  away  of  the  forward 
funnel  and  mast.  He  got  and  kept  up 
steam  "to  a  much  higher  point  than  would 
have  appeared  at  all  possible,"  and  when  the 
sea  rose,  as  it  always  does  if  you  are  in 
trouble,  he  "improvised  pumping  and 
drainage  arrangements,  thus  allowing  the 
ship  to  steam  at  a  good  speed  on  the  whole." 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    175 

There  could  not  have  been  more  than  40 
feet  of  hole. 

The  surgeon — a  probationer — performed 
an  amputation  single-handed  in  the  wreckage 
by  the  bridge,  and  by  his  "wonderful  skill, 
resource,  and  unceasing  care  and  devotion 
undoubtedly  saved  the  lives  of  the  many 
seriously  wounded  men."  That  no  horror 
might  be  lacking,  there  was  "a  short  circuit 
among  the  bridge  wreckage  for  a  consider- 
able time."  The  searchlight  and  wireless 
were  tangled  up  together,  and  the  electricity 
leaked  into  everything. 

There  were  also  three  wise  men  who 
saved  the  ship  whose  names  must  not  be 
forgotten.  They  were  Chief  Engine-room 
Artificer  Lee,  Stoker  Petty  Officer  Gardiner, 
and  Stoker  Elvins.  When  the  funnel  car- 
ried away  it  was  touch  and  go  whether 
the  foremost  boiler  would  not  explode. 
These  three  "put  on  respirators  and  kept 
the  fans  going  till  all  fumes,  etc.,  were 
cleared  away."  To  each  man,  you  will 
observe,  his  own  particular  Hell  which  he 
entered  of  his  own  particular  initiative. 


176  SEA  WARFARE 

Lastly,  there  were  the  two  remaining 
quartermasters — mutinous  dogs,  both  of 
'em — one  wounded  in  the  right  hand  and 
the  other  in  the  left,  who  took  the  wheel 
between  them  all  the  way  home,  thus 
improvising  one  complete  Navy-pattern 
quartermaster,  and  "refused  to  be  relieved 
during  the  whole  thirty-six  hours  before  the 
ship  returned  to  port."  So  Eblis  passes  out 
of  the  picture  with  "never  a  moan  or  com- 
plaint from  a  single  wounded  man,  and  in 
spite  of  the  rough  weather  of  June  1st  they 
all  remained  cheery."  They  had  one  Hun 
cruiser,  torpedoed,  to  their  credit,  and  strong 
evidence  abroad  that  they  had  knocked  the 
end  out  of  another. 

But  Gehenna  went  down,  and  those  of 
her  crew  who  remained  hung  on  to  the  rafts 
that  destroyers  carry  till  they  were  picked 
up  about  the  dawn  by  Shaitan,  third  in  the 
line,  who,  at  that  hour,  was  in  no  shape  to 
give  much  help.  Here  is  Shaitan's  tale. 
She  saw  the  unknown  cruisers  overtake  the 
flotilla,  saw  their  leader  switch  on  search- 
lights and  open  fire  as  she  drew  abreast  of 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    177 

Gehenna,  and  at  once  fired  a  torpedo  at  the 
third  German  ship.  Shaitan  could  not  see 
Eblis,  her  next  ahead,  for,  as  we  know, 
Eblis  after  firing  her  torpedoes  had  hauled 
off  to  reload.  When  the  enemy  switched 
his  searchlights  off  Shaitan  hauled  out  too. 
It  is  not  wholesome  for  destroyers  to  keep 
on  the  same  course  within  a  thousand  yards 
of  big  enemy  cruisers. 

She  picked  up  a  destroyer  of  another 
division,  Goblin,  who  for  the  moment  had 
not  been  caught  by  the  enemy's  searchlights 
and  had  profited  by  this  decent  obscurity 
to  fire  a  torpedo  at  the  hindmost  of  the 
cruisers.  Almost  as  Shaitan  took  station 
behind  Goblin  the  latter  was  lighted  up  by  a 
large  ship  and  heavily  fired  at.  The  enemy 
fled,  but  she  left  Goblin  out  of  control, 
with  a  grisly  list  of  casualties,  and  her  helm 
jammed.  Goblin  swerved,  returned,  and 
swerved  again ;  Shaitan  astern  tried  to  clear 
her,  and  the  two  fell  aboard  each  other, 
Goblin's  bows  deep  in  Shaitan's  fore-bridge. 
While  they  hung  thus,  locked,  an  unknown 
destroyer  rammed  Shaitan  aft,  cutting  off 


178  SEA  WARFARE 

several  feet  of  her  stern  and  leaving  her 
rudder  jammed  hard  over.  As  complete  a 
mess  as  the  Personal  Devil  himself  could 
have  devised,  and  all  due  to  the  merest 
accident  of  a  few  panicky  salvoes.  Presently 
the  two  ships  worked  clear  in  a  smother  of 
steam  and  oil,  and  went  their  several  ways. 
Quite  a  while  after  she  had  parted  from 
Shaitan,  Goblin  discovered  several  of 
Shaitan's  people,  some  of  them  wounded, 
on  her  own  foc'sle,  where  they  had  been 
pitched  by  the  collision.  Goblin,  working 
her  way  homeward  on  such  boilers  as 
remained,  carried  on  a  one-gun  fight  at  a 
few  cables'  distance  with  some  enemy 
destroyers,  who,  not  knowing  what  state 
she  was  in,  sheered  off  after  a  few  rounds. 
Shaitan,  holed  forward  and  opened  up  aft, 
came  across  the  survivors  from  Gehenna 
clinging  to  their  raft,  and  took  them  aboard. 
Then  some  of  our  destroyers — they  were 
thick  on  the  sea  that  night — tried  to  tow 
her  stern-first,  for  Goblin  had  cut  her  up 
badly  forward.  But,  since  Shaitan  lacked 
any  stern,  and  her  rudder  was  jammed  hard 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    179 

across  where  the  stern  should  have  been, 
the  hawsers  parted,  and,  after  leave  asked  of 
lawful  authority,  across  all  that  waste  of 
waters,  they  sank  Shaitan  by  gun-fire,  having 
first  taken  all  the  proper  steps  about  the 
confidential  books.  Yet  Shaitan  had  had 
her  little  crumb  of  comfort  ere  the  end. 
While  she  lay  crippled  she  saw  quite  close 
to  her  a  German  cruiser  that  was  trailing 
homeward  in  the  dawn  gradually  heel  over 
and  sink. 

This  completes  my  version  of  the  various 
accounts  of  the  four  destroyers  directly 
concerned  for  a  few  hours,  on  one  minute 
section  of  one  wing  of  our  battle.  Other 
ships  witnessed  other  aspects  of  the  agony 
and  duly  noted  them  as  they  went  about 
their  business.  One  of  our  battleships,  for 
instance,  made  out  by  the  glare  of  burning 
Gehenna  that  the  supposed  cruiser  that 
Eblis  torpedoed  was  a  German  battleship 
of  a  certain  class.  So  Gehenna  did  not  die 
in  vain,  and  we  may  take  it  that  the  dis- 
covery did  not  unduly  depress  Eblis's 
wounded  in  hospital. 


180  SEA  WARFARE 

ASKING  FOR  TROUBLE 

The  rest  of  the  flotilla  that  the  four 
destroyers  belong  to  had  their  own  ad- 
ventures later.  One  of  them,  chasing  or 
being  chased,  saw  Goblin  out  of  control  just 
before  Goblin  and  Shaitan  locked,  and 
narrowly  escaped  adding  herself  to  that 
triple  collision.  Another  loosed  a  couple  of 
torpedoes  at  the  enemy  ships  who  were 
attacking  Gehenna,  which,  perhaps,  ac- 
counts for  the  anxiety  of  the  enemy  to  break 
away  from  that  hornets'  nest  as  soon  as  pos- 
sible. Half  a  dozen  or  so  of  them  ran  into 
four  German  battleships,  which  they  set 
about  torpedoing  at  ranges  varying  from 
half  a  mile  to  a  mile  and  a  half.  It  was  ask- 
ing for  trouble  and  they  got  it;  but  they  got 
in  return  at  least  one  big  ship,  and  the  same 
observant  battleship  of  ours  who  identified 
Eblis's  bird  reported  three  satisfactory  ex- 
plosions in  half  an  hour,  followed  by  a  glare 
that  lit  up  all  the  sky.  One  of  the  flotilla, 
closing  on  what  she  thought  was  the  smoke 
of  a  sister  in  difficulties,  found  herself  well 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    181 

in  among  the  four  battleships.  "It  was  too 
late  to  get  away,"  she  says,  so  she  attacked, 
fired  her  torpedo,  was  caught  up  in  the 
glare  of  a  couple  of  searchlights,  and 
pounded  to  pieces  in  five  minutes,  not  even 
her  rafts  being  left.  She  went  down  with 
her  colours  flying,  having  fought  to  the  last 
available  gun. 

Another  destroyer  who  had  borne  a  hand 
in  Gehenna's  trouble  had  her  try  at  the  four 
battleships  and  got  in  a  torpedo  at  800  yards. 
She  saw  it  explode  and  the  ship  take  a 
heavy  list.  "Then  I  was  chased,"  which  is 
not  surprising.  She  picked  up  a  friend  who 
could  only  do  20  knots.  They  sighted 
several  Hun  destroyers  who  fled  from  them; 
then  dropped  on  to  four  Hun  destroyers 
all  together,  who  made  great  parade  of 
commencing  action,  but  soon  afterwards 
"thought  better  of  it,  and  turned  away." 
So  you  see,  in  that  flotilla  alone  there  was 
every  variety  of  fight,  from  the  ordered 
attacks  of  squadrons  under  control,  to  single 
ship  affairs,  every  turn  of  which  depended 
on  the  second's  decision  of  the  men  con- 


182  SEA  WARFARE 

cerned;  endurance  to  the  hopeless  end; 
bluff  and  cunning;  reckless  advance  and 
red-hot  flight;  clear  vision  and  as  much  of 
blank  bewilderment  as  the  Senior  Service 
permits  its  children  to  indulge  in.  That  is 
not  much.  When  a  destroyer  who  has  been 
dodging  enemy  torpedoes  and  gun-fire  in 
the  dark  realises  about  midnight  that  she  is 
"following  a  strange  British  flotilla,  having 
lost  sight  of  my  own,"  she  "decides  to 
remain  with  them,"  and  shares  their  for- 
tunes and  whatever  language  is  going. 

If  lost  hounds  could  speak  when  they 
cast  up  next  day,  after  an  unchecked  night 
among  the  wild  life  of  the  dark,  they  would 
talk  much  as  our  destroyers  do. 


THE  doorkeepers  of  Zion, 
They  do  not  always  stand 

In  helmet  and  whole  armour, 
With  halberds  in  their  hand; 

But,  being  sure  of  Zion, 
\  And  all  her  mysteries, 

They  rest  awhile  in  Zion, 

Sit  down  and  smile  in  Zion; 

Ay,  even  jest  in  Zion, 
In  Zion,  at  their  ease. 

The  gatekeepers  of  Baal, 

They  dare  not  sit  or  lean, 
But  fume  and  fret  and  posture 

And  foam  and  curse  between; 
For  being  bound  to  Baal, 

Whose  sacrifice  is  vain, 
Their  rest  is  scant  with  Baal, 
They  glare  and  pant  for  Baal, 
They  mouth  and  rant  for  Baal, 

For  Baal  in  their  pain. 

183 


184  SEA  WARFARE 

Bid  we  will  go  to  Zion, 

By  choice  and  not  through  dread, 
With  these  our  present  comrades 

And  those  our  present  dead; 
And,  being  free  of  Zion 

In  both  her  fellowships, 
Sit  down  and  sup  in  Zion — 
Stand  up  and  drink  in  Zion 
Whatever  cup  in  Zion 

Is  offered  to  our  lips  ! 


Ill 

THE  MEANING  OF  "JOSS" 
A  YOUNG  OFFICER'S  LETTER 

As  ONE  digs  deeper  into  the  records,  one 
sees  the  various  temperaments  of  men  re- 
vealing themselves  through  all  the  formal 
wording.  One  commander  may  be  an  ex- 
pert in  torpedo-work,  whose  first  care  is  how 
and  where  his  shots  went,  and  whether, 
under  all  circumstances  of  pace,  light,  and 
angle,  the  best  had  been  achieved.  De- 
stroyers do  not  carry  unlimited  stocks  of  tor- 
pedoes. It  rests  with  commanders  whether 
they  shall  spend  with  a  free  hand  at  first  or 
save  for  night-work  ahead — risk  a  possible 
while  he  is  yet  afloat,  or  hang  on  coldly  for 
a  certain ty.  So  in  the  old  whaling  days  did 
the  harponeer  bring  up  or  back  off  his  boat 

185 


186  SEA  WARFARE 

till  some  shift  of  the  great  fish's  bulk  gave 
him  sure  opening  at  the  deep-seated  life. 

And  then  comes  the  question  of  private 
judgment.  "I  thought  so-and-so  would 
happen.  Therefore,  I  did  thus  and  thus." 
Things  may  or  may  not  turn  out  as  antici- 
pated, but  that  is  merely  another  of  the 
million  chances  of  the  sea.  Take  a  case  in 
point.  A  flotilla  of  our  destroyers  sighted 
six  (there  had  been  eight  the  previous  after- 
noon) German  battleships  of  Kingly  and  Im- 
perial caste  very  early  in  the  morning  of  the 
1st  June,  and  duly  attacked.  At  first  our 
people  ran  parallel  to  the  enemy,  then,  as 
far  as  one  can  make  out,  headed  them  and 
swept  round  sharp  to  the  left,  firing  tor- 
pedoes from  their  port  or  left-hand  tubes. 
Between  them  they  hit  a  battleship,  which 
went  up  in  flame  and  debris.  But  one  of  the 
flotilla  had  not  turned  with  the  rest.  She 
had  anticipated  that  the  attack  would  be 
made  on  another  quarter,  and,  for  certain 
technical  reasons,  she  was  not  ready.  When 
she  was,  she  turned,  and  single-handed — the 
rest  of  the  flotilla  having  finished  and  gone 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    187 

on — carried  out  two  attacks  on  the  five  re- 
maining battleships.  She  got  one  of  them 
amidships,  causing  a  terrific  explosion  and 
flame  above  the  masthead,  which  signifies 
that  the  magazine  has  been  touched  off. 
She  counted  the  battleships  when  the  smoke 
had  cleared,  and  there  were  but  four  of  them. 
She  herself  was  not  hit,  though  shots  fell 
close.  She  went  her  way,  and,  seeing 
nothing  of  her  sisters,  picked  up  another 
flotilla  and  stayed  with  it  till  the  end.  Do 
I  make  clear  the  maze  of  blind  hazard  and 
wary  judgment  in  which  our  men  of  the  sea 
must  move? 


SAVED  BY  A  SMOKE  SCREEN 

Some  of  the  original  flotilla  were  chased 
and  headed  about  by  cruisers  after  their 
attack  on  the  six  battleships,  and  a  single 
shell  from  battleship  or  cruiser  reduced  one 
of  them  to  such  a  condition  that  she  was 
brought  home  by  her  sub-lieutenant  and  a 
midshipman.  Her  captain,  first  lieutenant, 
gunner,  torpedo  coxswain,  and  both  signal- 


188  SEA  WARFARE 

men  were  either  killed  or  wounded;  the 
bridge,  with  charts,  instruments,  and  signal- 
ling gear  went;  all  torpedoes  were  expended; 
a  gun  was  out  of  action,  and  the  usual  cordite 
fires  developed.  Luckily,  the  engines  were 
workable.  She  escaped  under  cover  of  a 
smoke  screen,  which  is  an  unbearably  filthy 
outpouring  of  the  densest  smoke,  made  by 
increasing  the  proportion  of  oil  to  air  in  the 
furnace-feed.  It  rolls  forth  from  the  funnels 
looking  solid  enough  to  sit  upon,  spreads  in 
a  searchlight-proof  pat  of  impenetrable 
beastliness,  and  in  still  weather  hangs  for 
hours.  But  it  saved  that  ship. 

It  is  curious  to  note  the  subdued  tone 
of  a  boy's  report  when  by  some  accident  of 
slaughter  he  is  raised  to  command.  There 
are  certain  formalities  which  every  ship 
must  comply  with  on  entering  certain  ports. 
No  fully-striped  commander  would  trouble 
to  detail  them  any  more  than  he  would  the 
aspect  of  his  Club  porter.  The  young  'un 
puts  it  all  down,  as  who  should  say:  "I  rang 
the  bell,  wiped  my  feet  on  the  mat,  and 
asked  if  they  were  at  home."  He  is  most 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    189 

careful  of  the  port  proprieties,  and  since  he 
will  be  sub.  again  to-morrow,  and  all  his 
equals  will  tell  him  exactly  how  he  ought 
to  have  handled  her,  he  almost  apologises 
for  the  steps  he  took — deeds  which  ashore 
might  be  called  cool  or  daring. 

The  Senior  Service  does  not  gush. 
There  are  certain  formulae  appropriate  to 
every  occasion.  One  of  our  destroyers,  who 
was  knocked  out  early  in  the  day  and 
lay  helpless,  was  sighted  by  several  of  her 
companions.  One  of  them  reported  her  to 
the  authorities,  but,  being  busy  at  the  time, 
said  he  did  not  think  himself  justified  in 
hampering  himself  with  a  disabled  ship  in 
the  middle  of  an  action.  It  was  not  as  if 
she  was  sinking  either.  She  was  only  holed 
foreward  and  aft,  with  a  bad  hit  in  the  en- 
gine-room, and  her  steering-gear  knocked 
out.  In  this  posture  she  cheered  the  passing 
ships,  and  set  about  repairing  her  hurts 
with  good  heart  and  a  smiling  countenance. 
She  managed  to  get  under  some  sort  of 
way  at  midnight,  and  next  day  was  taken 
in  tow  by  a  friend.  She  says  officially, 


190  SEA  WARFARE 

"his  assistance  was  invaluable,  as  I  had  no 
oil  left  and  met  heavy  weather." 

What  actually  happened  was  much  less 
formal.  Fleet  destroyers,  as  a  rule,  do  not 
worry  about  navigation.  They  take  their 
orders  from  the  flagship,  and  range  out 
and  return,  on  signal,  like  sheep-dogs  whose 
fixed  point  is  their  shepherd.  Consequently, 
when  they  break  loose  on  their  own  they 
may  fetch  up  rather  doubtful  of  their  where- 
abouts— as  this  injured  one  did.  After  she 
had  been  so  kindly  taken  in  tow,  she  in- 
quired of  her  friend  ("Message  captain  to 
captain") — "Have  you  any  notion  where 
we  are?"  The  friend  replied,  "I  have  not, 
but  I  will  find  out."  So  the  friend  waited 
on  the  sun  with  the  necessary  implements, 
which  luckily  had  not  been  smashed,  and  in 
due  time  made:  "Our  observed  position  at 
this  hour  is  thus  and  thus."  The  tow,  ir- 
reverently, "Is  it?  'Didn't  know  you  were 
a  navigator."  The  friend,  with  hauteur, 
"Yes;  it's  rather  a  hobby  of  mine."  The 
tow,  "Had  no  idea  it  was  as  bad  as  all 
that;  but  I'm  afraid  I'll  have  to  trust  you 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    191 

this  time.  Go  ahead,  and  be  quick  about 
it."  They  reached  a  port,  correctly  enough, 
but  to  this  hour  the  tow,  having  studied 
with  the  friend  at  a  place  called  Dartmouth, 
insists  that  it  was  pure  Joss. 


CONCERNING  Joss 

And  Joss,  which  is  luck,  fortune,  destiny, 
the  irony  of  Fate  or  Nemesis,  is  the  greatest 
of  all  the  Battle-gods  that  move  on  the 
waters.  As  I  will  show  you  later,  knowl- 
edge of  gunnery  and  a  delicate  instinct  for 
what  is  in  the  enemy's  minds  may  enable 
a  destroyer  to  thread  her  way,  slowing, 
speeding,  and  twisting  between  the  heavy 
salvoes  of  opposing  fleets.  As  the  dank- 
smelling  waterspouts  rise  and  break,  she 
judges  where  the  next  grove  of  them  will 
sprout.  If  her  judgment  is  correct,  she 
may  enter  it  in  her  report  as  a  little  feather 
in  her  cap.  But  it  is  Joss  when  the 
stray  12-inch  shell,  hurled  by  a  giant  at 
some  giant  ten  miles  away,  falls  on  her 
from  Heaven  and  wipes  out  her  and  her 


192  SEA  WARFARE 

profound  calculations.  This  was  seen  to 
happen  to  a  Hun  destroyer  in  mid-attack. 
While  she  was  being  laboriously  dealt  with 
by  a  4-inch  gun  something  immense  took 
her,  and — she  was  not. 

Joss  it  is,  too,  when  the  cruiser's  8-inch 
shot,  that  should  have  raked  out  your 
innards  from  the  forward  boiler  to  the 
ward-room  stove,  deflects  miraculously,  like 
a  twig  dragged  through  deep  water,  and, 
almost  returning  on  its  track,  skips  off 
unbursten  and  leaves  you  reprieved  by  the 
breadth  of  a  nail  from  three  deaths  in 
one.  Later,  a  single  splinter,  no  more,  may 
cut  your  oil-supply  pipes  as  dreadfully  and 
completely  as  a  broken  wind-screen  in  a 
collision  cuts  the  surprised  motorist's  throat. 
Then  you  must  lie  useless,  fighting  oil-fires 
while  the  precious  fuel  gutters  away  till 
you  have  to  ask  leave  to  escape  while  there 
are  yet  a  few  tons  left.  One  ship  who  was 
once  bled  white  by  such  a  piece  of  Joss, 
suggested  it  would  be  better  that  oil-pipes 
should  be  led  along  certain  lines  which  she 
sketched.  As  if  that  would  make  any 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    193 

difference  to  Joss  when  he  wants  to  show 
what  he  can  do ! 

Our  sea-people,  who  have  worked  with 
him  for  a  thousand  wettish  years,  have 
acquired  something  of  Joss's  large  toleration 
and  humour.  He  causes  ships  in  thick 
weather,  or  under  strain,  to  mistake  friends 
for  enemies.  At  such  times,  if  your  heart 
is  full  of  highly  organised  hate,  you  strafe 
frightfully  and  efficiently  till  one  of  you 
perishes,  and  the  survivor  reports  wonders 
which  are  duly  wirelessed  all  over  the  world. 
But  if  you  worship  Joss,  you  reflect,  you 
put  two  and  two  together  in  a  casual  insular 
way,  and  arrive — sometimes  both  parties 
arrive — at  instinctive  conclusions  which 
avoid  trouble. 

AN  AFFAIR  IN  THE  NORTH  SEA 

Witness  this  tale.  It  does  not  concern 
the  Jutland  fight,  but  another  little  affair 
which  took  place  a  while  ago  in  the  North 
Sea.  It  was  understood  that  a  certain 
type  of  cruiser  of  ours  would  not  be  taking 


194  SEA  WARFARE 

part  in  a  certain  show.  Therefore,  if  any- 
one saw  cruisers  very  like  them  he  might 
blaze  at  them  with  a  clear  conscience, 
for  they  would  be  Hun-boats.  And  one  of 
our  destroyers — thick  weather  as  usual- 
spied  the  silhouettes  of  cruisers  exactly  like 
our  own  stealing  across  the  haze.  Said  the 
commander  to  his  sub.,  with  an  inflection 
neither  period,  exclamation,  nor  inter- 
rogation-mark can  render — "That — is — 
them." 

Said  the  sub.  in  precisely  the  same  tone 
-"That  is  them,  sir."  "As  my  sub.," 
said  the  commander,  "your  observation  is 
strictly  in  accord  with  the  traditions  of  the 
Service.  Now,  as  man  to  man,  what  are 
they?"  "We-el,"  said  the  sub.,  "since  you 

put  it  that  way,  I'm  d d  if  Pd  fire." 

And  they  didn't,  and  they  were  quite  right. 
The  destroyer  had  been  off  on  another  job, 
and  Joss  had  jammed  the  latest  wireless 
orders  to  her  at  the  last  moment.  But  Joss 
had  also  put  it  into  the  hearts  of  the  boys 
to  save  themselves  and  others. 

I  hold  no  brief  for  the  Hun,  but  honestly 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    195 

I  think  he  has  not  lied  as  much  about  the 
Jutland  fight  as  people  believe,  and  that 
when  he  protests  he  sank  a  ship,  he  did  very 
completely  sink  a  ship.  I  am  the  more  con- 
firmed in  this  belief  by  a  still  small  voice 
among  the  Jutland  reports,  musing  aloud 
over  an  account  of  an  unaccountable  outly- 
ing brawl  witnessed  by  one  of  our  destroyers. 
The  voice  suggests  that  what  the  destroyer 
saw  was  one  German  ship  being  sunk  by 
another.  Amen ! 

Our  destroyers  saw  a  good  deal  that 
night  on  the  face  of  the  waters.  Some  of 
them  who  were  working  in  "areas  of  com- 
parative calm"  submit  charts  of  their 
tangled  courses,  all  studded  with  notes 
along  the  zigzag — something  like  this:— 

"8  P.M. — Heard  explosion  to  the  N.W" 
(A  neat  arrow-head  points  that  way.)  Half 
an  inch  farther  along,  a  short  change  of 
course,  and  the  word  Hit  explains  the 
meaning  of—  "  Sighted  enemy  cruiser  engaged 
with  destroyers"  Another  twist  follows. 
"  9.30  P.M. — Passed  wreckage.  Engaged  enemy 
destroyers  port  beam  opposite  courses" 


196  SEA  WARFARE 

A  long  straight  line  without  incident, 
then  a  tangle,  and — "  Picked  up  survivors  of 
So-and-so."  A  stretch  over  to  some  ship 
that  they  were  transferred  to,  a  fresh 
departure,  and  another  brush  with  "Single 
destroyer  on  parallel  course.  Hit.  0.7  A.  M. 
— Passed  bows  enemy  cruiser  sticking  up. 
0.18. — Joined  flotilla  for  attack  on  battleship 
squadron."  So  it  runs  on — one  little  ship 
in  a  few  short  hours  passing  through  more 
wonders  of  peril  and  accident  than  all  the 
old  fleets  ever  dreamed. 

A  "CHILD'S"  LETTER 

In  years  to  come  naval  experts  will 
collate  all  those  diagrams,  and  furiously 
argue  over  them.  A  lot  of  the  destroyer 
work  was  inevitably  as  mixed  as  bombing 
down  a  trench,  as  the  scuffle  of  a  polo  match, 
or  as  the  hot  heaving  heart  of  a  football 
scrum.  It  is  difficult  to  realise  when  one 
considers  the  size  of  the  sea,  that  it  is  that 
very  size  and  absence  of  boundary  which 
helps  the  confusion.  To  give  an  idea,  here  is 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    197 

a  letter  (it  has  been  quoted  before,  I  believe, 
but  it  is  good  enough  to  repeat  many  times), 
from  a  nineteen-year-old  child  to  his  friend 
aged  seventeen  (and  minus  one  leg),  in  a 
hospital: 

"I'm  so  awfully  sorry  you  weren't  in  it. 
It  was  rather  terrible,  but  a  wonderful 
experience,  and  I  wouldn't  have  missed  it 
for  anything,  but,  by  Jove,  it  isn't  a  thing 
one  wants  to  make  a  habit  of. 

"I  must  say  it  is  very  different  from  what 
I  expected.  I  expected  to  be  excited,  but 
was  not  a  bit.  It's  hard  to  express  what 
we  did  feel  like,  but  you  know  the  sort  of 
feeling  one  has  when  one  goes  in  to  bat  at 
cricket,  and  rather  a  lot  depends  upon  your 
doing  well,  and  you  are  waiting  for  the 
first  ball.  Well,  it's  very  much  the  same 
as  that.  Do  you  know  what  I  mean?  A 
sort  of  tense  feeling,  not  quite  knowing 
what  to  expect.  One  does  not  feel  the 
slightest  bit  frightened,  and  the  idea  that 
there's  a  chance  of  you  and  your  ship  being 
scuppered  does  not  enter  one's  head.  There 
are  too  many  other  things  to  think  about." 


198  SEA  WARFARE 

Follows  the  usual  "No  ship  like  our 
ship"  talkee,  and  a  note  of  where  she  was 
at  the  time. 

"Then  they  ordered  us  to  attack,  so  we 
bustled  off  full  bore.  Being  navigator,  also 
having  control  of  all  the  guns,  I  was  on  the 
bridge  all  the  time,  and  remained  for  twelve 
hours  without  leaving  it  at  all.  When  we 
got  fairly  close  I  sighted  a  good-looking 
Hun  destroyer,  which  I  thought  I'd  like 
to  strafe.  You  know,  it's  awful  fun  to 
know  that  you  can  blaze  off  at  a  real  ship, 
and  do  as  much  damage  as  you  like.  Well, 
I'd  just  got  their  range  on  the  guns,  and 
we'd  just  fired  one  round,  when  some  more 
of  our  destroyers  coming  from  the  opposite 
direction  got  between  us  and  the  enemy 
and  completely  blanketed  us,  so  we  had 
to  stop,  which  was  rather  rot.  Shortly 
afterwards  they  recalled  us,  so  we  bustled 
back  again.  How  any  destroyer  got  out 
of  it  is  perfectly  wonderful. 

"Literally  there  were  hundreds  of  progs 
(shells  falling)  all  round  us,  from  a  15- 
inch  to  a  4-inch,  and  you  know  what  a  big 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    199 

splash  a  15 -inch  bursting  in  the  water  does 
make.  We  got  washed  through  by  the 
spray.  Just  as  we  were  getting  back,  a 
whole  salvo  of  big  shells  fell  just  in  front 
of  us  and  short  of  our  big  ships.  The 
skipper  and  I  did  rapid  calculations  as  to 
how  long  it  would  take  them  to  reload, 
fire  again,  time  of  flight,  etc.,  as  we  had 
to  go  right  through  the  spot.  We  came 
to  the  conclusion  that,  as  they  were  short 
a  bit,  they  would  probably  go  up  a  bit,  and 
(they?)  didn't,  but  luckily  they  altered 
deflection,  and  the  next  fell  right  astern 
of  us.  Anyhow,  we  managed  to  come 
out  of  that  row  without  the  ship  or  a  man 
on  board  being  touched. 

WHAT  THE  BIG  SHIPS  STAND 

"It's  extraordinary  the  amount  of  knock- 
ing about  the  big  ships  can  stand.  One  saw 
them  hit,  and  they  seemed  to  be  one  mass 
of  flame  and  smoke,  and  you  think  they're 
gone,  but  when  the  smoke  clears  away  they 
are  apparently  none  the  worse  and  still 


£00  SEA  WARFARE 

firing  away.  But  to  see  a  ship  blow  up  is 
a  terrible  and  wonderful  sight;  an  enormous 
volume  of  flame  and  smoke  almost  200  feet 
high  and  great  pieces  of  metal,  etc.,  blown 
sky-high,  and  then  when  the  smoke  clears 
not  a  sign  of  the  ship.  We  saw  one  other 
extraordinary  sight.  Of  course,  you  know 
the  North  Sea  is  very  shallow.  We  came 
across  a  Hun  cruiser  absolutely  on  end,  his 
stern  on  the  bottom  and  his  bow  sticking 
up  about  30  feet  in  the  water;  and  a  little 
farther  on  a  destroyer  in  precisely  the  same 
position. 

"I  couldn't  be  certain,  but  I  rather  think 
I  saw  your  old  ship  crashing  along  and 
blazing  away,  but  I  expect  you  have  heard 
from  some  of  your  pals.  But  the  night  was 
far  and  away  the  worse  time  of  all.  It  was 
pitch  dark,  and,  of  course,  absolutely  no 
lights,  and  the  firing  seems  so  much  more 
at  night,  as  you  could  see  the  flashes  light- 
ing up  the  sky,  and  it  seemed  to  make  much 
more  noise,  and  you  could  see  ships  on 
fire  and  blowing  up.  Of  course  we  showed 
absolutely  no  lights.  One  expected  to  be 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    201 

surprised  any  moment,  and  eventually 
we  were.  We  suddenly  found  ourselves 
within  1000  yards  of  two  or  three  big  Hun 
cruisers.  They  switched  on  their  search- 
lights and  started  firing  like  nothing  on 
earth.  Then  they  put  their  searchlights 
on  us,  but  for  some  extraordinary  reason 
did  not  fire  on  us.  As,  of  course,  we  were 
going  full  speed  we  lost  them  in  a  moment, 
but  I  must  say,  that  I,  and  I  think  every- 
body else,  thought  that  that  was  the  end, 
but  one  does  not  feel  afraid  or  panicky.  I 
think  I  felt  rather  cooler  then  than  at  any 
other  time.  I  asked  lots  of  people  after- 
wards what  they  felt  like,  and  they  all  said 
the  same  thing.  It  all  happens  in  a  few 
seconds;  one  hasn't  time  to  think;  but 
never  in  all  my  life  have  I  been  so  thank- 
ful to  see  daylight  again — and  I  don't 
think  I  ever  want  to  see  another  night  like 
that — it's  such  an  awful  strain.  One  does 
not  notice  it  at  the  time,  but  it's  the  re- 
action afterwards. 

"I  never  noticed  I  was  tired  till  I  got 
back  to  harbour,  and  then  we  all  turned  in 


202  SEA  WARFARE 

and  absolutely  slept  like  logs.  We  were 
seventy-two  hours  with  little  or  no  sleep. 
The  skipper  was  perfectly  wonderful.  He 
never  left  the  bridge  for  a  minute  for 
twenty-four  hours,  and  was  on  the  bridge  or 
in  the  chart-house  the  whole  time  we  were 
out  (the  chart-house  is  an  airy  dog-kennel 
that  opens  off  the  bridge)  and  I've  never 
seen  anybody  so  cool  and  unruffled.  He 
stood  there  smoking  his  pipe  as  if  nothing 
out  of  the  ordinary  were  happening. 

"One  quite  forgot  all  about  time.  I  was 
relieved  at  4  A.  M.,  and  on  looking  at  my 
watch  found  I  had  been  up  there  nearly 
twelve  hours,  and  then  discovered  I  was 
rather  hungry.  The  skipper  and  I  had 
some  cheese  and  biscuits,  ham  sandwiches, 
and  water  on  the  bridge,  and  then  I  went 
down  and  brewed  some  cocoa  and  ship's 
biscuit." 


NOT  in  the  thick  of  the  fight, 
Not  in  the  press  of  the  odds, 

Do  the  heroes  come  to  their  height 
Or  we  know  the  demi-gods. 

That  stands  over  till  peace. 

We  can  only  perceive 
Men  returned  from  the  seas, 

Very  grateful  for  leave. 

They  grant  us  sudden  days 

Snatched  from  their  business  of  war. 
We  are  too  close  to  appraise 

What  manner  of  men  they  are. 

And  whether  their  names  go  down 

With  age-kept  victories, 
or  whether  they  battle  and  drown 

Unreckoned  is  hid  from  our  eyes. 

203 


204  SEA  WARFARE 

They  are  too  near  to  be  great, 
But  our  children  shall  understand 

When  and  how  our  fate 

Was  changed,  and  by  whose  hand. 

Our  children  shall  measure  their  worth. 

We  are  content  to  be  blind. 
For  we  know  that  we  walk  on  a  new-born 
earth 

With  the  saviours  of  mankind. 


IV 

THE  MINDS  OF  MEN 
How  IT  Is  DONE 

WHAT  mystery  is  there  like  the  mystery 
of  the  other  man's  jobs — or  what  world  so 
cut  off  as  that  which  he  enters  when  he  goes 
to  it?  The  eminent  surgeon  is  altogether 
such  an  one  as  ourselves,  even  till  his  hand 
falls  on  the  knob  of  the  theatre  door.  After 
that,  in  the  silence,  among  the  ether  fumes, 
no  man  except  his  acolytes,  and  they  won't 
tell,  has  ever  seen  his  face.  So  with  the 
unconsidered  curate.  Yet,  before  the  war, 
he  had  more  experience  of  the  business  and 
detail  of  death  than  any  of  the  people  who 
contemned  him.  His  face  also,  as  he  stands 
his  bedside-watches — that  countenance  with 
which  he  shall  justify  himself  to  his  Maker 

205 


206  SEA  WARFARE 

— none  have  ever  looked  upon.  Even  the 
ditcher  is  a  priest  of  mysteries  at  the  high 
moment  when  he  lays  out  in  his  mind  his 
levels  and  the  fall  of  the  water  that  he  alone 
can  draw  off  clearly.  But  catch  any  of  these 
men  five  minutes  after  they  have  left  their 
altars,  and  you  will  find  the  doors  are 
shut. 

Chance  sent  me  almost  immediately  after 
the  Jutland  fight  a  lieutenant  of  one  of  the 
destroyers  engaged.  Among  other  matters, 
I  asked  him  if  there  was  any  particular 
noise. 

"Well,  I  haven't  been  in  the  trenches,  of 
course,"  he  replied,  "but  I  don't  think  there 
could  have  been  much  more  noise  than 
there  was." 

This  bears  out  a  report  of  a  destroyer 
who  could  not  be  certain  whether  an 
enemy  battleship  had  blown  up  or  not, 
saying  that,  in  that  particular  corner,  it 
would  have  been  impossible  to  identify 
anything  less  than  the  explosion  of  a  whole 
magazine. 

"It  wasn't  exactly  noise,"  he  reflected. 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    207 

"Noise  is  what  you  take  in  from  outside. 
This  was  inside  you.  It  seemed  to  lift  you 
right  out  of  everything." 

"And  how  did  the  light  affect  one?"  I 
asked,  trying  to  work  out  a  theory  that  noise 
and  light  produced  beyond  known  endurance 
form  an  unknown  anaesthetic  and  stimulant, 
comparable  to,  but  infinitely  more  potent 
than,  the  soothing  effect  of  the  smoke-pall 
of  ancient  battles. 

"The  lights  were  rather  curious,"  was  the 
answer.  "I  don't  know  that  one  noticed 
searchlights  particularly,  unless  they  meant 
business;  but  when  a  lot  of  big  guns 
loosed  off  together,  the  whole  sea  was 
lit  up  and  you  could  see  our  destroyers 
running  about  like  cockroaches  on  a  tin 
soup-plate." 

"Then  is  black  the  best  colour  for  our 
destroyers?  Some  commanders  seem  to 
think  we  ought  to  use  grey." 

"Blessed  if  I  know,"  said  young  Dante. 
"Everything  shows  black  in  that  light. 
Then  it  all  goes  out  again  with  a  bang. 
Trying  for  the  eyes  if  you  are  spotting." 


208  SEA  WARFARE 

SHIP  DOGS 

"And  how  did  the  dogs  take  it?"  I  pur- 
sued. There  are  several  destroyers  more  or 
less  owned  by  pet  dogs,  who  start  life  as  the 
chance-found  property  of  a  stoker,  and  end 
in  supreme  command  of  the  bridge. 

"Most  of  'em  didn't  like  it  a  bit.  They 
went  below  one  time,  and  wanted  to  be 
loved.  They  knew  it  wasn't  ordinary 
practice." 

"What  did  Arabella  do?"  I  had  heard 
a  good  deal  of  Arabella. 

"Oh,  Arabella's  quite  different.  Her  job 
has  always  been  to  look  after  her  master's 
pyjamas — folded  up  at  the  head  of  the 
bunk,  you  know.  She  found  out  pretty 
soon  the  bridge  was  no  place  for  a  lady, 
so  she  hopped  downstairs  and  got  in.  You 
know  how  she  makes  three  little  jumps 
to  it — first,  on  to  the  chair;  then  on  the 
flap-table,  and  then  up  on  the  pillow. 
When  the  show  was  over,  there  she  was  as 
usual." 

"Was  she  glad  to  see  her  master?" 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    209 

"Ra-ather.  Arabella  was  the  bold,  gay 
lady-dog  then  /" 

Now  Arabella  is  between  nine  and  eleven 
and  a  half  inches  long. 

"Does  the  Hun  run  to  pets  at  all?" 

"I  shouldn't  say  so.  He's  an  unsym- 
pathetic felon — the  Hun.  But  he  might 
cherish  a  dachshund  or  so.  We  never  picked 
up  any  ships'  pets  off  him,  and  I'm  sure  we 
should  if  there  had  been." 

That  I  believed  as  implicitly  as  the  tale  of 
a  destroyer  attack  some  months  ago,  the 
object  of  which  was  to  flush  Zeppelins.  It 
succeeded,  for  the  flotilla  was  attacked  by 
several.  Right  in  the  middle  of  the  flurry, 
a  destroyer  asked  permission  to  stop  and 
lower  dinghy  to  pick  up  ship's  dog  which  had 
fallen  overboard.  Permission  was  granted, 
and  the  dog  was  duly  rescued.  "Lord 
knows  what  the  Hun  made  of  it,"  said  my 
informant.  "He  was  rumbling  round, 
dropping  bombs;  and  the  dinghy  was 
digging  out  for  all  she  was  worth,  and  the 
Dog-Fiend  was  swimming  for  Dunkirk. 
It  must  have  looked  rather  mad  from  above. 


210  SEA  WARFARE 

But  they  saved  the  Dog-Fiend,  and  then 
everybody  swore  he  was  a  German  spy  in 
disguise." 

THE  FIGHT 

"And— about  this  Jutland  fight?"  I 
hinted,  not  for  the  first  time. 

"Oh,  that  was  just  a  fight.  There  was 
more  of  it  than  any  other -fight,  I  suppose, 
but  I  expect  all  modern  naval  actions  must 
be  pretty  much  the  same." 

"But  what  does  one  do — how  does  one 
feel?"  I  insisted,  though  I  knew  it  was 
hopeless. 

"  One  does  one's  job.  Things  are  happen- 
ing all  the  time.  A  man  may  be  right 
under  your  nose  one  minute — serving  a  gun 
or  something — and  the  next  minute  he  isn't 
there." 

"And  one  notices  that  at  the  time?" 

"Yes.  But  there's  no  time  to  keep  on 
noticing  it.  You've  got  to  carry  on  some- 
how or  other,  or  your  show  stops.  I  tell 
you  what  one  does  notice,  though.  If  one 
goes  below  for  anything,  or  has  to  pass 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND 

through  a  flat  somewhere,  and  one  sees  the 
old  wardroom  clock  ticking,  or  a  photograph 
pinned  up,  or  anything  of  that  sort,  one 
notices  that.  Oh  yes,  and  there  was  another 
thing — the  way  a  ship  seemed  to  blow  up  if 
you  were  far  off  her.  You'd  see  a  glare, 
then  a  blaze,  and  then  the  smoke — miles 
high,  lifting  quite  slowly.  Then  you'd  get 
the  row  and  the  jar  of  it — just  like  bumping 
over  submarines.  Then,  a  long  while  after 
p'raps,  you  run  through  a  regular  rain  of 
bits  of  burnt  paper  coming  down  on  the 
decks — like  showers  of  volcanic  ash,  you 
know."  The  door  of  the  operating-room 
seemed  just  about  to  open,  but  it  shut 
again. 

"And  the  Huns'  gunnery?" 

"That  was  various.  Sometimes  they 
began  quite  well,  and  went  to  pieces  after 
they'd  been  strafed  a  little;  but  sometimes 
they  picked  up  again.  There  was  one  Hun- 
boat  that  got  no  end  of  a  hammering,  and 
it  seemed  to  do  her  gunnery  good.  She 
improved  tremendously  till  we  sank  her.  I 
expect  we'd  knocked  out  some  scientific 


SEA  WARFARE 

Hun  in  the  controls,  and  he'd  been  succeeded 
by  a  man  who  knew  how." 

It  used  to  be  "Fritz"  last  year  when 
they  spoke  of  the  enemy.  Now  it  is  Hun 
or,  as  I  have  heard,  "  Yahun,"  being  a  super- 
lative of  Yahoo.  In  the  Napoleonic  wars 
we  called  the  Frenchmen  too  many  names 
for  any  one  of  them  to  endure;  but  this 
is  the  age  of  standardisation. 

"And  what  about  our  lower  deck?"  I 
continued. 

"They?  Oh,  they  carried  on  as  usual. 
It  takes  a  lot  to  impress  the  lower  deck 
when  they're  busy."  And  he  mentioned 
several  little  things  that  confirmed  this. 
They  had  a  great  deal  to  do,  and  they  did 
it  serenely  because  they  had  been  trained 
to  carry  on  under  all  conditions  without 
panicking.  What  they  did  in  the  way  of 
running  repairs  was  even  more  wonderful, 
if  that  be  possible,  than  their  normal 
routine. 

The  lower  deck  nowadays  is  full  of 
strange  fish  with  unlooked-for  accomplish- 
ments, as  in  the  recorded  case  of  two  simple 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    213 

seamen  of  a  destroyer  who,  when  need  was 
sorest,  came  to  the  front  as  trained  experts 
in  first-aid. 

"And  now — what  about  the  actual  Hun 
losses  at  Jutland?"  I  ventured. 

"You've  seen  the  list,  haven't  you?" 

"Yes,  but  it  occurred  to  me — that  they 
might  have  been  a  shade  under-estimated, 
and  I  thought  perhaps " 

A  perfectly  plain  asbestos  fire-curtain 
descended  in  front  of  the  already  locked 
door.  It  was  none  of  his  business  to 
dispute  the  drive.  If  there  were  any 
discrepancies  between  estimate  and  results, 
one  might  be  sure  that  the  enemy  knew 
about  them,  which  was  the  chief  thing  that 
mattered. 

It  was,  said  he,  Joss  that  the  light  was 
so  bad  at  the  hour  of  the  last  round-up 
when  our  main  fleet  had  come  down  from 
the  north  and  shovelled  the  Hun  round  on 
his  tracks.  Per  contra,  had  it  been  any 
other  kind  of  weather,  the  odds  were  the 
Hun  would  not  have  ventured  so  far.  As 
it  was,  the  Hun's  fleet  had  come  out  and 


214  SEA  WARFARE 

gone  back  again,  none  the  better  for  air  and 
exercise.  We  must  be  thankful  for  what 
we  had  managed  to  pick  up.  But  talking 
of  picking  up,  there  was  an  instance  of 
almost  unparalleled  Joss  which  had  stuck 
in  his  memory.  A  soldier-man,  related 
to  one  of  the  officers  in  one  of  our  ships 
that  was  put  down,  had  got  five  days' 
leave  from  the  trenches  which  he  spent 
with  his  relative  aboard,  and  thus  dropped 
in  for  the  whole  performance.  He  had 
been  employed  in  helping  to  spot,  and 
had  lived  up  a  mast  till  the  ship  sank, 
when  he  stepped  off  into  the  water  and 
swam  about  till  he  was  fished  out  and  put 
ashore.  By  that  time,  the  tale  goes, 
his  engine-room-dried  khaki  had  shrunk 
half-way  up  his  legs  and  arms,  in  which 
costume  he  reported  himself  to  the  War 
Office,  and  pleaded  for  one  little  day's 
extension  of  leave  to  make  himself  decent. 
"Not  a  bit  of  it,"  said  the  War  Office.  "If 
you  choose  to  spend  your  leave  playing  with 
sailor-men  and  getting  wet  all  over,  that's 
your  concern.  You  will  return  to  duty  by 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    215 

to-night's  boat."  (This  may  be  a  libel  on 
the  W.O.,  but  it  sounds  very  like  them.) 
"And  he  had  to,"  said  the  boy,  "but  I 
expect  he  spent  the  next  week  at  Head- 
quarters telling  fat  generals  all  about  the 
fight." 

"And,  of  course,  the  Admiralty  gave 
you  all  lots  of  leave?" 

"Us?  Yes,  heaps.  We  had  nothing  to 
do  except  clean  down  and  oil  up,  and 
be  ready  to  go  to  sea  again  in  a  few 
hours." 

That  little  fact  was  brought  out  at  the 
end  of  almost  every  destroyer's  report. 
"Having  returned  to  base  at  such  and  such 
a  time,  I  took  in  oil,  etc.,  and  reported 
ready  for  sea  at  -  -  o'clock."  When  you 
think  of  the  amount  of  work  a  ship  needs 
even  after  peace  manoeuvres,  you  can 
realise  what  has  to  be  done  on  the  heels 
of  an  action.  And,  as  there  is  nothing  like 
housework  for  the  troubled  soul  of  a  woman, 
so  a  general  clean-up  is  good  for  sailors. 
I  had  this  from  a  petty  officer  who  had  also 
passed  through  deep  waters.  "If  you've 


216  SEA  WARFARE 

seen  your  best  friend  go  from  alongside 
you,  and  your  own  officer,  and  your  own 
boat's  crew  with  him,  and  things  of  that 
kind,  a  man's  best  comfort  is  small  varie- 
gated jobs  which  he  is  damned  for  continu- 
ous." 


THE  SILENT  NAVY 

Presently  my  friend  of  the  destroyer 
went  back  to  his  stark,  desolate  life,  where 
feelings  do  not  count,  and  the  fact  of  his 
being  cold,  wet,  sea-sick,  sleepless,  or  dog- 
tired  had  no  bearing  whatever  on  his 
business,  which  was  to  turn  out  at  any 
hour  in  any  weather  and  do  or  endure, 
decently,  according  to  ritual,  what  that 
hour  and  that  weather  demanded.  It  is 
hard  to  reach  the  kernel  of  Navy  minds. 
The  unbribable  seas  and  mechanisms  they 
work  on  and  through  have  given  them  the 
simplicity  of  elements  and  machines.  The 
habit  of  dealing  with  swift  accident,  a  life 
of  closest  and  strictest  association  with 
their  own  caste  as  well  as  contact  with 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    £17 

all  kinds  of  men  all  earth  over,  hare  added 
an  imiiMiiiui'  gunning  to  those  qualities; 
and  that  they  are  from  early  youth  cut 
out  of  all  feelings  that  may  come  between 
them  and  their  ends,  makes  them  more 

even  to  their 


own  people.    What,  then,  must  they  be  to 
the  enemy? 

Here  is  a  Service  which  prowls  forth 
and  achieves,  at  the  lowest,  something  of  a 
victory.  How  far-reaching  a  one  only  the 
war's  end  will  reveaL  It  returns  in  gioooi> 
gaUtirfr,  broken  by  the  occasional  hoot 
of  the  long-shore  loafer,  after  issuing  a 
bulletin  which  though  it  may  enlighten  the 
professional  mim|  does  not  exhilarate  the 
layman.  Mfanrim<»  the  enemy  triumphs, 
wirdessly  ,  far  and  wide.  A  few  frigid  and 
pcrfunctory-seesning  contradictions  are  pot 
forward  against  his  resounding  claims:  a 
Naval  expert  or  two  is  heard  talking  "off": 
the  rest  is  sJIrnrp.  Anon,  the  enemy,  after 
a  prodigious  amount  of  explanation  which 
not  even  the  neutrals  seem  to  take  any 
interest  in,  revises  his  claims,  and,  very 


218  SEA  WARFARE 

modestly,  enlarges  his  losses.  Still  no  sign. 
After  weeks  there  appears  a  document 
giving  our  version  of  the  affair,  which  is 
as  colourless,  detached,  and  scrupulously 
impartial  as  the  findings  of  a  prize-court. 
It  opines  that  the  list  of  enemy  losses  which 
it  submits  "give  the  minimum  in  regard  to 
numbers  though  it  is  possibly  not  entirely 
accurate  in  regard  to  the  particular  class 
of  vessel,  especially  those  that  were  sunk 
during  the  night  attacks."  Here  the  mat- 
ter rests  and  remains — just  like  our  block- 
ade. There  is  an  insolence  about  it  all 
that  makes  one  gasp. 

Yet  that  insolence  springs  naturally  and 
unconsciously  as  an  oath,  out  of  the  same 
spirit  that  caused  the  destroyer  to  pick  up 
the  dog.  The  reports  themselves,  and 
tenfold  more  the  stories  not  in  the  reports, 
are  charged  with  it,  but  no  words  by  any 
outsider  can  reproduce  just  that  professional 
tone  and  touch.  A  man  writing  home  after 
the  fight,  points  out  that  the  great  consola- 
tion for  not  having  cleaned  up  the  enemy 
altogether  was  that  "anyhow  those  East 


DESTROYERS  AT  JUTLAND    219 

Coast  devils" — a  fellow-squadron,  if  you 
please,  which  up  till  Jutland  had  had  most 
of  the  fighting— "  were  not  there.  They 
missed  that  show.  We  were  as  cock-ahoop 
as  a  girl  who  had  been  to  a  dance  that  her 
sister  has  missed." 

This  was  one  of  the  figures  in  that 
dance: 

"A  little  British  destroyer,  her  midships 
rent  by  a  great  shell  meant  for  a  battle- 
cruiser;  exuding  steam  from  every  pore; 
able  to  go  ahead  but  not  to  steer;  unable 
to  get  out  of  anybody's  way,  likely  to  be 
rammed  by  any  one  of  a  dozen  ships; 
her  syren  whimpering:  'Let  me  through! 
Make  way!';  her  crew  fallen  in  aft  dressed 
in  life-belts  ready  for  her  final  plunge, 
and  cheering  wildly  as  it  might  have  been 
an  enthusiastic  crowd  when  the  King 
passes." 

Let  us  close  on  that  note.  We  have 
been  compassed  about  so  long  and  so 
blindingly  by  wonders  and  miracles;  so 
overwhelmed  by  revelations  of  the  spirit 
of  men  in  the  basest  and  most  high; 


220  SEA  WARFARE 

that  we  have  neither  time  to  keep  tally 
of  these  furious  days,  nor  mind  to  discern 
upon  which  hour  of  them  our  world's  fate 
hung. 


THE  NEUTRAL 

BRETHREN,  how  shall  it  fare  with  me 

When  the  war  is  laid  aside, 
If  it  be  proven  that  I  am  he 

For  whom  a  world  has  died  ? 

If  it  be  proven  that  all  my  good, 
And  the  greater  good  I  will  make, 

Were  purchased  me  by  a  multitude 
Who  suffered  for  my  sake  ? 

That  I  was  delivered  by  mere  mankind 

Vowed  to  one  sacrifice, 
And  not,  as  I  hold  them,  battle-blind, 

But  dying  with  opened  eyes  ? 

That  they  did  not  ask  me  to  draw  the  sword 
When  they  stood  to  endure  their  lot, 

That  they  only  looked  to  me  for  a  word, 
And  I  answered  I  knew  them  not  ? 
221 


222  SEA  WARFARE 

//  it  be  found,  when  the  battle  clears, 

Their  death  has  set  me  free, 
Then  how  shall  I  live  with  myself  through 
the  years 

Which  they  have  bought  for  me  ? 

Brethren,  how  must  it  fare  with  me, 

Or  how  am  I  justified, 
If  it  be  proven  that  I  am  he 

For  whom  mankind  has  died; 
If  it  be  proven  that  I  am  he 

Who  being  questioned  denied  ? 


THE    END 


THE  COUNTRY   LIFE   PRESS 
GARDEN   CITY,    N.   Y. 


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